Brian Bailie is a Professional Golf Coach who specializes in Putting and Short Game. He has over 17 years of Collegiate Coaching experience for Men’s and Women’s Programs and during his tenure at The University of Virginia he was selected as the National Assistant Collegiate Coach of the Year in 2010.
Brian is also a co-founder of the GameForge Golf Statistics and Performance App and joins #OntheMark to help you to understand your performance markers and improve them for better scoring.
His A.I. powered GameForge App is able to aid in understanding and predicting performance by way of modelling, using data metrics like Greens in Regulation, Scrambing and Total Putts.
In the conversation Brian elaborates on:
The correct “language” of scoring Putting distance control and Green reading Birdie conversion, and The statistical model to being a Scratch golfer He also delves into performance improvement elements like:
How ‘concepts’ are killers for mindsets How the ‘short game’ is the anchor to good play The danger of training what you are good at How golf is like a Decathlon Approach Play values in contrast to Distance Gain values, and Feedback loops and Reflection periods for improvement. Brian also illustrates a Finger Measurement System – like Aimpoint in Putting – for picking appropriate targets on full shots.
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ABOUT ON THE MARK: Mark’s knowledge, insight and experience have made him a sought-after mind on the PGA and European tours. Through his career, he has taught and/or consulted to various Major Champions, PGA Tour winners and global Tour professionals such as: Larry Mize, Loren Roberts, Louis Oosthuizen, Patton Kizzire, Trevor Immelman, Charl Schwartzel, Scott Brown, Andrew Georgiou and Rourke can der Spuy. His golf teaching experience and anecdotal storytelling broadcasting style makes him a popular host for golf outings.
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[Music] tribe around the world notice I have found a kindred spirit and there he is if you’re watching on YouTube bearded smiling waving it’s Brian Bailey welcome to the show man how are you thank you thank you for having us oh are you kidding me look I’m thankful to Mike grevas who’s been on the show for a while uh he’s the uh the smart one of the bunch of us you know and how the brain works and out of the blue you know he he keeps me honest I’ll say Brian and out of the every so often you’ll you you’ll text me and say yo I didn’t agree with that thing on your podcast and I love that and then the other day text me goes you’ve got to get this guy on your show and this guy was you so I’m so glad to have you well Dr Mike revos is an awesome dude a funny story when I met Mike I was actually in summer vacation looking for a book to read and I’m scrolling through Amazon and purchased his book um uh motivation is the way I think is what it’s called Uh so I’m literally on the beach and I ordered it and I guess he got my email and he goes thank you for doing that and he goes your your tag is game Forge do you run that company I go yeah yeah he goes I joined it about three months ago so two Kindred Spirits Crossing path no clue so that’s how I met Dr Mike okay well tell the global audience about you about game Forge about fuel golf.tv all these Ventures you got on the all right uh yeah I’m a busy guy uh no um I was a college coach for almost 20 years I coached the D3 level D2 level D1 level I was the assistant coach at the University of Virginia Women’s Golf for almost 11 years uh when I got out of coaching I was like what what am I gonna do with my life I still want to be in the golf I need you to stop you koi you are you were in 2011 I believe it is the national assistant coach of the year correct I was there my award behind me for Coach of the Year 8 so uh so yes I was I was honored to get that and uh a lot of years a lot of hard work um but yes I don’t like talking about me I like talking about getting people better so so I was a coach I got out of it and said what what am I gonna do with my life and and the one piece that I felt that as a coach I was not the best at was understanding performance completely right uh Strokes gain was just kicking off Brody was brilliant revolutionized data science tip of the cap to Brody I love what he’s done with that but it didn’t give me the answers I was looking for for day in day out coach um so hey I was like let’s create a training data science program that ties in score with with what it takes to train I tack my business partner who’s Mark Sweeney uh founder of AO uh we’re good friends we’ve been friends now for 15 plus years uh he said hey I would love to kind of create a venture with this so uh Mark has a big background in data science of course he created AO he loves numbers I love numbers but I love people more so we’re a great team on that aspect and we created game Forge um what we did a little different than everybody else is we went away from the shots gain model uh shots gain is brilliant to compare for the PGA Tour it’s awesome everyone’s playing the same event same conditions same times the same it’s a homogeneous study it’s the same 200 people coming in and out all the time uh what we found in college and things that it just seemed to not give me the answers I wanted um so what we did is I I challenged markk I was on a car ride had this Epiphany I said can we predict score in 10 matrix or less well we found out we could predict score in about 18 it’s moved to about 24 to give a little more insight but once we understood that we could predict score with our modeling and the beauty of it I still work at the I live in Charlottesville Virginia um University of Virginia is right here so we’ve actually run all of our data and all of our model through their data science program and they have confirmed that our models are right they’re they’re accurate um I don’t think there’s a lot of data science companies out there that can say that they’ve actually been tested outside of uh in-house creation and we were like whoa this is a new way to be able to understand what performance is and how to train it um and and that was the Genesis of game Forge so you started with less than 10 now you’re uh the number fails me 24 you said it was predictors there’s 24 Main matrics uh that we need to do to be a well technically we can predict your score fairly ACC accurate about 85 90% accurate with three stats really uh so this is kind of as an entry level these would be the three stats you would want to pay attention to which would be um greens scramble total putts if you take those three three numbers we can we can predict your score pretty accurately but not good enough to really be able to say so for all those that are shooting in the 90s and the hundreds if you just track those three stats how often do I hit the green when I miss the green how often do I save par and then what are my total putts uh you get a really good understanding of your game total putts I used to be a hater on total putts total putts is brilliant as I’ve learned the data I I know a lot of people don’t like total putts but total putts is a great predictor of score uh you can outl you can outlier the heck out of it well soand so just shot this and did this that’s an outlier but if you look at it as a metrics over time it’s brilliant I’ll get a lot of hate for that but sorry no no no let’s do this because I love hate because I my podcast is to bring all of the information to everybody yeah you know it’s we’re not an echo chamber here I will have um so so the total puts you are now speaking my language the very truth of it and and you know I’m I’m a really holistic teacher deep down and you know I began as the guy who had the back way back in the day I’m dating myself the Sony handicam and all we did was compare one swing to the other and so I’ve seen everything from the handicam era to now where we we are with all this 3D mapping and stuff like that um and so I sort of was I’ve always got this old school bent to me and then the new school stuff and and so I have strokes gain and all these things you talk about and I’ll never forget Bill Katon who was like a he was like a mentor to me in Broad my broadcast career and at the beginning of it all we were on a TV show together and and I’m dropping all these numbers you know all the rest of it and he looks at me and he goes we go to a commercial break he goes you know the only number that counts and I what’s that bill and I said what three put avoidance I I gave him something smart he goes no the number in the bottom right block of your scorecard okay it really does and we forget that a lot of times so so so if what with what you say total putts I mean if that number at the bottom right block is 75 if you’re taking 35 putts to get that that is was great exactly man so I can learn a lot so here’s a really funny part so we created a a combination stat we call it to Total putts Strokes to Green right how fast does it take you from the tbox to the green and then how fast did you get off the green so we know what those number we created it for high handicappers we said if you’re a 100 shooter these are the only two stats you need all right and and basically all you need is your score minus total putts gives you shots to ho and then we know the benchmarks when you shoot a certain number these are the numbers you compare it to your benchmark you know where to go work just at its highest level my putts are too high so let’s work on putting or it’s taking me too long to get to the green let’s figure out what piece is preventing me from getting to the green and let’s go work on it so I think the beauty of the system is everything we’ve tried to do is just to give players and coaches answers here’s here’s the here’s the deficit here’s their strengths monitor the strengths keep them going the deficits let’s let’s go tackle this um and that like I said everything we try to do is just to give answers and we don’t want you to have to be a data science Professor to be able to navigate uh systems we just want to say XYZ good work on Z you know what that simple it it is so rudimentary it’s almost too simple and as a golf instructor I’ve heard countless times is like it can’t be this easy and I’m like look golf is hard but it is simple if you just think about the mechanics of the thing and I say scoring is understanding scor scoring is easy scoring is hard but understanding what it takes to score is yeah it’s not rocket science we’re golfers well to that I’m digressing but I want to share this and what your take and then we’ll move along I’ve given so many lessons to thousands of them I’ve taught golf since 1996 for p sake um to like guys who shoot worse guys and girls who shoot like 100 or 95 or something and they just want to break 90 I’m like you realize that if you make five 18 times you’re going to shoot 90 yep so I’m like if you get to every Green in three and you tart you’re going to shoot 90 and they look at me as if to go oh my God qu Heaven has descended to Earth yet they will still get there on the te try and whale on driveway I’m like you’ve got three to get to the green just make sure you done three putter worse seven iron seven iron seven iron you’re on the green you got a chance to make par instead they they watch television they they read the magazines and they they flare one right they lose a ball and you know then it’s quad okay so let’s go ahead you start off here you’d send me some notes I’m just going to kind of go through them just elaborate and go wherever you want okay all right um you say we talk the language of offense yes making birdie defense saving power and noise scoring outside of birdie par bogy I found that it intrigued me so I’d love your commentary there so we as golf as instructors and as a group really like to make things complicated golf is like every other sport it’s a proximity game right so let’s talk about American football right you get across a 50 yard line you’re chance to score goes up dramatically you get into field goal range you chance to score goes up dramatically you get inside the 20 now it’s more likely that you’re going to score than not you get inside the 10 it’s more likely you’re going to score a touchdown than not it’s very Progressive on how we do it offense inside a golf is the same thing how often do we hit greens it’s important but proximity of those shots are really important I know dispersions and percentages are great but players understand a 20- foot circle so we we have a couple different circles we talk about we talk about a blackjack Circle that’s anytime you hit a green inside of eight feet right really good chance to make birdie why because that’s like in like in poker Blackjack is the only game that is a break even eight feet in in is kind of your Mendoza those are the putts that you are beating the house on so we want to register how often are we inside at eight feet and what is our conversion rate so everything we do is opportunity conversion too right how often do I do it and what is my conversion rate we do a in position Circle which is 20 feet in in we do a EG Circle which is 20 to 40 feet like you hit the green but at distance and then we call it out of position when you’re outside of 40 feet so the beauty of making offense is how often do I hit because 85 90% of all birdies come 20 feet and in on the putting green where they come from so how often do I hit it within 20 feet is a statistic as a competitive player you need to understand and then what is my conversion rate like my my opportunities the average tour pro is going to be about seven puts inside of 20 ft uh to make birdie average Collegian is going to be about 6 and a half seven they’re going to kind of be in the same category where the Tor Pro blows the Collegian out of the water is they average about 30 putts from 9 to 20 feet percentage wise and the average Collegian is about 18 to 20 so they’re 12% better so where’s the collegan doesn’t match up to the Tour player a lot of it is rounding on the green and we can talk about in the future but but to make offense we’ve got to understand how often do we have opportunities and then if that’s not good enough we also have to know conversion rates and that’s all the kind of stuff that we track inside of game Forge and the beauty is if it’s a conversion issue if I’m not making enough between 9 and 20 then we say is it read speed start line kind of your Three core of what it takes to make a putt uh we’ll test inside the system we’ll start to create a mapping of who the player is and your journey is set you start doing this you start have this understanding maybe my speed control is not very good I’m leaving too many putts short I’m too whatever that is we can diagnose the skills that are missing and then from there start to give you some skill pieces to back fill it and then if you need technical work you know find the right coach that can enhance you to whatever you need to get to so yeah I’m sorry you want to speak I I’ll talk a lot just stop me no I no I don’t want to cut over you I was like you’ve got me thinking You’ got me thinking and I want to run this past you because you know I’m a former college coach like you and I’ve seen really talented kids come through here and you talk about you know inside your 20 foot range for the Collegian and heck for anybody in my opinion um if you’re inside that range you have an opportunity right uh if you’re outside like you say if you’re outside that range it’s more like you’re playing to avoid yeah the game changes it’s it’s no longer offense really we’re more into into a defensive mode yeah you you’re trying to avoid the big number which to me find it’s rampant with even collegians isn’t it you don’t even want to know I’ll give you the numbers in college the average college player uh three putts about 1.25 per round oh yeah it’s ridiculous well look I related to a very talented young lady in my daughter who hits it like she fell out of heaven and the the other day in a tournament she had six three puts yeah yeah okay and they weren’t from that far away by the way so but but anyway so I I said to him this is the very talented kid because he was always in contention but never finishing it and I used to have a drill that the team did I’m like if you want to win a tournament over the final nine holes you basically just have to make putts yeah and I had a thing called the hurricane where it was basically a circle around a hole that went from one foot to two foot to three all the way out to 9 ft yep and the goal was to make all of those nine so basically a couple tap-ins and a few of those sort of the eight foot rangee which you have to knock in and he started to do this and then I spoke to him about making use of the opportunity so he’s hit it inside of your circle right and everybodyy would hit on the real makeable ones would either be low or it would be a little short and I’m like do you understand that you had the opportunity but it wasn’t really an opportunity because you did not give the hole a chance to catch it yeah and and I’m sure this jives with with what you’re saying as well because opportunities to your observation a few and far between yep yes yeah you’re getting less than half your you know if you think about it you’re getting seven good opportunities as a high-end player maybe like Sheffer is doing stuff a little different uh he’s kind of through the roof on some pieces but the the you again that the the width of really high in competitive golfers is very narrow like the the best in the world compared to the average tour player it’s about one opportunity per round now that adds up over four rounds and then what conversion rates are that can be a very big number but it it’s it’s very finite on what that is so every opportunity you have you have to really take advantage of it and and to give you an idea distance control and read to me are the holy Grails of putting uh start line is what most people talk about because it’s the easiest and most tangible to understand uh but most play start lines and all are really affected because they have really bad movement like the way that they move the putter in time they just ramp up speeds and stuff so they lose face a lot and a lot of that is because they don’t read the putt very well so it’s this this circle of pieces that have to move and to give you an idea on putting uh and this is drills when I do with my players if we’re inside of 10 feet and they leave a putt short drills over you failed like for my highend players like players in their 70s right if we’re not getting into the hole inside of 10 feet the best players in the world don’t they leave one putt short out of 100 that’s that’s statistically what’s happening so if we’re training and they’re leaving putt short inside of 10 feet drills over like I want them out of the mentality of a good putt is dying one revolution in the cup that’s not the definition of a good Putt and then so from 10 to 20 it’s 10% so if we’re doing a drill uh and or from 9 to 20 it’s like I said it’s 10% short so if they leave one putt short inside of a a drill fine if they leave two putt drill’s over sorry we we’re we’re we’re underperforming for what the level we’re trying to get to now I’m talking this is high-end players right birdie conversation really shouldn’t happen with your player it’s gonna freak A lot of people out till about 76 uh birdies kind of don’t really do anything until 76 you start to see birdies go like this so we we go from 76 where they’re going to be averaging one and a halfish to two per round to if you want to shoot par we’re going to be talking around three and if we want to start going under par you know you’re talking four or five birdies per round so that’s kind of the the the the nature of scoring where Bogies will just kind of basically at about 72 and some change birdies and Bogies kind of yeah cross yeah okay um but again so for me as a coach and a player I need to understand how many birdies how many opportunity like if my player’s a good player but we’re not scoring what what are your birdie total we’re not performing well enough now let’s go figure out why what are what are your greens at it what are your positions that what are your conversion rates at where do we need to invest our time because again golf is a Time game like we can only put so much time we need to invest correctly on those areas to move them yeah um you you talk we’re talking about this now so I want to camp here for a little bit um and the birdie attempts look I know a lot of golfers listening to this might be bogey shooters or whatever but the truth of the matter is if you can hit Targets in regulation and have a good short game you’re well on your way to scoring better okay definitely and so I had a tough talented kid for a lesson yesterday afternoon and they had went out and hit I think it was 13 Greens in a round and not got the most out of it and you understand that this is like Elite level stuff and yet didn’t get much better than that the mindset of this player was like well I could to hit it better I’m like goodness gracious me anyway so I showed them some numbers from Aros that were like this is adequate Greens in regulation and they sort of turned the their head up to me as if to say you’re a nutcase I mean like a a scratch handicap golfer doesn’t H 11 Greens in regulation so so I want you to help folks quickly just put that Greens in regulation number into perspective a little bit Yeah so basically um here’s the secret this is something I didn’t know eight years ago all right if somebody sat across me eight years ago and says Brian Bailey I want to be scratched how do I do it I couldn’t answer it I can answer it today so here’s how you shoot scratch on average you’re going to hit 12 greens of the 12 greens you hit 50% of those are going to be inside of 20 feet we call that quality of green how so we track a thing called quality green how often do I hit the green but I’m inside that 20 foot scoring Zone uh has to be 50% or better and of that I have to make three putts so I make three birdies I miss six greens what I need to do is Chip it within six feet now we haven’t talked defense yet we’re still in the offensive mindset so the defensive mindset says when I chip I need to chip it within six feet and I’m at least three times and I have to make that then I have three bogeys three birdies I shoot even that is what the system tells us an average player is so that’s 12 greens so if I have a player that comes to me at at 10 and a half and 11 greens and says I want to be scratch we got we got to find one and a half greens immediately we’ve that’s where because you can’t be so good at putting and so good at short game that you can eliminate like you cannot close those gaps so so again you know and as you kind of go through if you’re going to be a mid 70 shooter you’re looking at probably 10 10 and a half greens if you’re going to be kind of breaking 80 we’re going to be in the 8 n so there’s a defin there is definitely a progression inside of score we can say when you hit this many greens this is what we would predict you to score which again is revolutionary inside of golf everything else is you know it’s it’s a version of something that gets a little com conflicted so we just like I said we try to break everything down into its simplest point and say what is a good day if you’re a you know if you’re a mid 70 shooter and you’re hitting 10 greens 11 greens that’s a good day if you’re if you want to be elite Tour player you know you’re going to looking at 13 13 and a half nobody averages more on the women’s side a couple of them will average more than that but not many so you know once you start getting into that 12 13 category you’re not going to elevate much again if you thinking percentage of growth it’s not there it’s it’s the supporting pieces was it a proximity maybe I hit a lot of greens but none of them but maybe I only had three or four putts inside of 20 feet so we got to work on proximities our dispersion rates can we control face path all that great stuff like like I said the journey once you want what I’ve learned more than anything and and is concepts are killers if I believe 13 is not good enough and I’m setting the goal to 15 I’ve created a prison I’ve created a prison that I cannot do so I’m creating a confab of what is possible and I’m M it’s impossible because no the best players on Earth do not do that I cannot think that I’m going to do that consistently I can do it for a tournament maybe around maybe a week or two but I can’t do it for a long period because nobody does so those are kind of like you is a self-made prison uh I I was I’m a short game putting coach set on the side when I have free time so you know how many I always ask questions what are your make percentages what do you think’s good inside of chipping from different lines what would be a good shot here and everyone tells me three feet three feet three because I want three because I’ll probably one putt yeah I’m like there’s no way you’re gonna put this shot within three feet the best players on tour average three feet on two live conditions 0 to 10 0 to 10 Fringe and Fairway that’s it everything else there outside of 3 feet so we’ve put a prison right everything has to be three we it’s impossible pressure to the I mean I can’t we’ve designed failure well I can’t tell you to that observation how as an OnCourse announcer on the PGA tour often times I will make the quip you know gets set up by Frank noo or someone and I’m like well Frank to be honest with you if they get it inside of five six seven feet over here they doing great and this is the elite level players in the game yeah but I guess if there’s a common denominator and maybe I’m putting the cart in front of the horse here for the talking points um 12 greens is really good to be scratch yeah hitting 50% of those inside of 20 ft is really good too that’s not bearing in mind if greens are real firm and the ball’s releasing and it’s hard to control and stuff so I guess the common denominator is still that you got to be sharp around the greens if you want to play at any sort of high level yeah that I always say the number one anchor and I I tell Juniors this so any Junior parents Juniors listening to this collegians that want to play professionally um I love it don’t don’t stop dreaming don’t stop pushing just because you know there you can make that path but You’ got to be honest where am I what does this look like but chipping and putting is the anchor disproportionately um the average tour player against some of the best collision I’m talking 10 12% difference in make rates now okay Co College greens versus Pro greens yes but pin placements allegedly versus pin place and tour neutralizes Perfection of green so I’m like we can and again when we argue that we’re arguing the fringes you know the beauty of data science is we take a lot of shots and we can show you what’s happening that is what data science is supposed to be uh where a lot of people go wrong in like reporting systems here’s what your tournament did and it dowes you with information on what just happened we’re a victim to today what just happened data science and this where we we sit we want to take a big long picture of what’s Happening and say this is kind of what’s happening over time and here’s how we’re going to close the gap so that emotional piece needs to be separated but I’ve had many of collegians and and and uh trying to play professionally and it takes that’s why most really good collegians when they come out of tour you know the Bryson’s and the havins they’re they’re outliers but when most of them come on it takes them a few years to figure out hey I gotta be better at putting I gotta be better at chipping and they figure it out but I mean it’s chipping wise the average Collegian they’re average inside of six feet which is a huge number um what we call inside the system P6 how often do I chip it within six feet when I missed the green um what we learn in college your P6 rate is your scramble rate so scramble is anytime I miss the green do I save par that number and their ability to hit within six feet is really the only way that they make far where the professional separates they actually hit a little bit better they hit about 8 to 10% better inside of six feet but they make a bunch of putts between seven and 12 that a college player doesn’t so falls back into the putty mode opportunities and conversions their conversions aren’t good enough but that’s there there’s are the big separators and once a player knows that so it’s a junior as a Collegian if if you come in my first year at a college plor and we say you want to play professionally here are our goals and we set the goals at tour I love it here’s our goals let’s start chomping let’s start segmenting these and let’s get there by your senior year let’s have this number um so the beauty is is it’s all attainable um it can be done but I like I said I think a lot of Concepts and a lot of belief structure inside of training and what’s important and when really as a coach we need to do a better job just to make sure that we’re giving them the right tools at the right time you know what you are doing as I listen to you and if people are really no what if people are really really hearing what you have to say you know everyone kind of has their own personal biases yeah and you make such a good point I mean in the game right now if you turn on any golf commercial or if you just happen to get on YouTube and the next thing you’re yearing stuff about speed and power off the tea and strokes go it’s it’s BS it’s selling a bad bill of goods i i i this is my new mantra and I stole this from a uh actually a player all right we did a whole session and they’re like this is the first time I’ve been taught to score and not to swing okay yes and yes what you’re doing is you are liberating folks because I’ll never forget um as a as a college coach watched a young kid named Eric Cole MH was playing at Nova sou Eastern Division 2 program and every time he hit it I was like geez how’s this kid shooting badly and the next thing I turn around and he shot like 75 or six or seven and I was like I don’t know what the hell’s going on he’s not on my team he’s playing for the opponent I’m quite happy he’s doing that because it looks like he’s about he’s about to shoot the grass off the place and then you know she wherewith Hall I guess and he’s overcome a bunch of things and he keeps playing and he keeps playing next thing mini tour mini tour forever forever forever and I was on the tour wins the Rookie of the Year now I’ve known Eric since he was a Collegian and so we talk a lot on the you know on the course when I’m out there and so I get him on the show and so I ask him I’m like Eric first off what kept you in it and he said something to the fact of love for the game and I’m like okay what’s the difference between going from the mini tour guy who was grinding to the winner to now the the contender and rookie of the year on the PGA tour and he said honestly it was reframing my thinking I’m now paraphrase I’m like okay let me have the secret and he goes well if I looked at the world rankings and I was 8900 something and Scotty Sheffer is number one or whoever it is he goes that seems like it’s a bridge that’s impossible yeah he goes but the truth of it is I just realized that on in every round of golf I just had to kind of shoot like maybe one one and a half Strokes better each day and would bridge that Gap Y and he said and then the the knock on was that allowed me then to perhaps play a bit more patiently when I had to kind of attack when I had to because it’s not like I’ve got to do something super special I’ve just got to shave one stroke around Y and I’m like for real and he goes honestly he goes because you know any day I can beat Scotty it’s just over the four that’s the thing I can’t beat days so so so what you’re saying here basically to folks is if to say if you get to the real truth you’ll realize that taking giant strides are the is the function of making really small kind of simple adjustments because the short game stuff is the lwh hanging fruit it’s it’s life it’s it’s it’s the way that you know that’s the way we learn everything in life it’s like how do you eat an elephant right the old proverb at a time it’s like it’s it’s incremental growth what I’ve learned and I’ve been coaching golf now for 30 almost 30 years I’m getting old um what I’ve learned is when people train what do they train they train with their really good at because they’re really good at it and then they they might backfill something on what happened today but does that create long-term growth no because I’m really good at something I might get 0.001% better today awesome I got better but is that tangible into score or if I’m reacting today I hit a really you know I had a really bad short game day well well was that a ball striking issue like you put it just in the wrong spot so you’re blaming your short game or you blame your putting because you didn’t make putts but I didn’t have many opportunity like so a lot if we get into the emotion of what happens today we’re in trouble because we’re reacting to an emotional trigger and we’re you know again when is the last time you made a great decision when you were emotional doesn’t happen very often right so understanding again what I what we as coaches and we as players need to learn from the coaches is there’s a big spectrum of what it takes to be a great golfer I call it the decathlon you know there’s no other sport on Earth other than maybe decathletes that are like golfers like a dick athlete you have to be really good at 10 events you don’t have to be great at each one but you have to be good at all of them to be a worldclass athlete to be a world class golfer you have to be good at everything now you can be elite at pieces you can’t be elite all the way through and there’s not a single golfer in the world number one golfer in the world that’s been Elite at everything but they’re really good at some pieces but they’re good enough at other other pieces that they’re not losing ground you know like where where does Scotty Sheffer like I don’t think people appreciate what Scotty’s doing right now um inside of the system we have what we call a game Forge index it takes every Matrix we measure and we put a score value to it so how well is he hitting Fairways in positions and we give a score value to it Scotty sheffler’s report looks like what it takes to win on tour so we we track every winter on tour and we compare uh and we we can talk our way through stuff like that and not like I said we can do a sidebar and we can kind of show you some of the stuff but but what Scotty is doing right now ball striking wise is just through the roof he’s averaging four putts inside of8 feet blackjacks the average top 10 player that’s averaging about two under uh Scotty’s averaging about three and a half to four um where he’s separating he has four attempts the average top 10 players at two and a half so he’s making now he doesn’t convert at a high enough rate on the short birdie putts okay but he has such a high opportunity it doesn’t matter he’s not converting at a low rate he’s converting right around average for PGA Pro but he’s not excelling if he was I I mean he would be doing something that nobody on Earth has ever seen but his putting is average for a tour player but he doesn’t have to be great because his opportunity numbers for scoring are just ridiculous and His short game is just unbelievable his ability to proximity wise so that’s how he does it and it’s it like I said I hear all these people going Scotty’s a bad no he’s an average Tor putter he’s average he’s not a great tour putter but he doesn’t have to be because the other parts are so good it’s okay now if his ball striking gets a little bit worse with what he’s doing now he’s gonna he’ll fall pretty quickly because his opportunities and conversions won’t match maybe his conversions get higher so there’s you know there’s chances to change on how we play the beauty of the system is we don’t stay the same pieces are going to move over time and we’ve got to recognize piece is moving and and kind of change our teaching and and whatnot to kind of evolve as an athlete and to get them better but you know when I sit and watch all these guys saying what a bad putter Scotty Sheffer I’m like not he’s average it’s okay to be average because his ball striking is ridiculous like it’s just ridiculous I want to say this there’s two points I want to make I’m likely to forget the second one so forgive me the first one is this and this is the golf teacher deep down the golf instructor you know whenever I’ve worked with any sort of player I hold my feet to the fire and I’m like look you should hit the ball better right away you shouldn’t get worse before you get better if you’re getting worse I’m giving you bad stuff all right so now but as you start hitting it better the ball will travel differently and your biases your M Tendencies will begin to change a little bit so as a result alignment on the golf course to not to do it but to trust it becomes wildly difficult yes until you develop that so as a result of all of that bad news I’ve just given you good news SL you know tainted I’m like you better get to practicing your short game if you want to keep your scoring up because you can go and hit the thing better all day long and make bogies because you’re making these little paper cuts and paper cuts and paper cuts because you just missed and you haven’t saved so I guess in all of it here I say to people if you want to make fewer big numbers those big ones 6 S8 Drive the ball in playm yep you want to make more small numbers like threes and fours you better get good at shot number three so getting right back to everything you’re saying over here yeah shot two and shot three is golf honestly yeah shot two is my approach approach is scoring right approach is everything right and this all right I’m all right for all you swing Nazis out there you’re gonna hate me get ready for this one we go let’s create hate I love hate and I’ll even give you my email and you can rip on me all you want um the worst predictor of score that exists is Fairways accuracy yeah just hitting Fairways right the worst predictor of score does that mean Fairways are not important no Fairways are only important if they’re taken away from your ability to hit shots hit the green and inside of 20t if I’m so here’s the here’s the best stat on earth right if you’re shooting mid 80s you’re probably hitting more Fairways than the best players on tour yeah right so so to me approaches approaches the center Hub of scoring so I have an approach shot now if I’m hitting wild t- shots that are taking penalties or putting me behind trees and I can’t play the hole as design that is punishing Fairways hurt approach shots are but if I’m having ability to hit approach shots and I’m not hitting enough greens my Approach game is not good enough if I have you know and then what is that proximity from the green those are all important pieces like so the Hub of scoring really is your approach I’m a putting coach I’m a short game coach in the pantheon of importance I’m like four six like in inside of the coaching world I’m like four six um I’m I’m really important when you’re getting into the 70s where we’re going to start pulling those pieces off but the swing coaches off the tea are really important in the beginning starting to take that dispersion rate a a 80 shooter is going to be like 15% like dispersion rate that’s a big number you know Tour player God I’m gonna create all kind of eight the average T player is about 9% dispersion yeah number year because that’s all shots coming out of Fairway coming out of rough bunkers it’s about 9% the number you hear a lot of time throwing around is 5% that’s when they hit the green it’s a 5% accuracy piece but overall they’re about a 9% accuracy piece so again understanding what lie conditions are and how they’re going to affect and putting pieces in the right position like that is the approach game sets all that up like if I’m in rough I know I’m gonna lose a certain amount of dispersion I you know if I train it you know I know what the rough is going to do to me maybe I lose some dispersion rate now I can make a better targeting guess but when I Target it I want to end up over here because that gives me the best chance to get up and down that’s learning to score where most players just think flag think this don’t think of lie don’t think of conditions don’t think of all the the the cathete don’t think of all the pieces that lead into that and then they put themselves in more and more trouble so again understanding how to scores understand and here’s again where we separated from Shots gain shots gain is a model where you compare against others yeah what we do is we compare against you so inside of our system when we talk about we have something that we call um uh basically kind of score Matrix for each player uh score impact and we say how valuable is it for you to hit the Fairway you’re score and somebody else’s score is completely different because we take all your stats all your conversion rates all your opportunities and we produce a number for you and we so some players it’s really important to hit the Fairway some players like hlin it doesn’t really matter he scores almost the same out of the Fairway as of the rough it’s you know it’s a very tight number uh for like a Brian Gay that was a shorter hitter that was a huge number like for him coming out of the rough versus a fairway is two different game and we do the same thing for approaches when you hit the green when you miss the green what is that value I again for an elite player I need to know that as a coach as we’re coming up with targeting Mark you know figuring out where to actually hit our marks we got to make sure that we’re putting we’re stacking as much as we can for that athlete to perform how they need to yeah it’s not a guess we know what it looks like this is what it will take so we need to come up with a situation to create this and we can train for that I’ve heard birdies are luck they are when you get on the green there’s a again from 9 to 20 feet the best in the world are only making three out of 10 there is a luck component on the sheer fact that only three out of 10 go but we can set up a system to give ourselves the opportunities we need if we give ourselves enough opportunities just playing percentages we’ll hit our numbers and that’s the piece that I think when a lot of coaches say birdies are are random is not really I’m coming up with an entire system to try to put myself in a certain number of opportunities to create birdie and I should see this so I hate when a a or a player comes to me goes well it’s just random no it’s not the ball going in the hole becomes more random and and and a kind of a sidebar I’m sorry I’m add written so I go everywhere a sidebar is when we talked you kind of talked about inside of putting if you’re really good at start line and you’re really good at read and you’re really good at speed at 9 to 20 feet if you miss one of those three if you’re off you miss the putt so the here’s the Here’s the the the meanness of golf the better my skill sets get when I skill set breaks I miss so putting so the best players in the world when they when a skill set’s broken they make a bad read they make a bad you know bad speed of the roll or their start lines off they miss but the beauty is is they’re so skilled and they understand that they can fix that okay I misread it I you know for some reason I ramped up the speed or whatever they’re so good that they’ll fix it the problem with most aspiring good golfers is they don’t understand the skill sets and they can’t fix it in round and then they’re starting to make make bad decisions and they’re changing things on the Fly that might help might not but then they’re taking whatever they’ve created and they they they’re making it a Frankenstein and that’s why they don’t get better is they don’t understand the skills to get better they’re putting Band-Aid on a Band-Aid and it just gets ugly so I always tell the the the harshness of this game as you get better as skill pieces break you will fail but you can fix immediately opposed to the player that doesn’t know I I love that and and I’m trying my best while I was listening to to all of your wisdom there to remember the point that I wanted to make sorry here’s the thing you talk about this well first off um you you say the three things required to make the puts you know I still I am still a firm believer in the fact that you know in all of my years I’ve been in golf since 1980 something yeah I’ve never seen the hole come back to the ball now look there’s certain situations so as far as your opportunities go when you’re inside 20 ft at least give the whole a chance to catch theall okay that’s why I said inside of drills earlier yeah you’ve got to ingrain your athlete to get the ball through the hole and then I want to now I want to ask you this because a lot of folks are listening to you going all right are you already saying this makes a lot of sense I I’m kind of going there but I’m still stuck with my my anchor which means like I need to get more powerful off the te because Strokes gain says that the closer I am to the Target the easier it is to hit close which is logical so help us over there because I feel like people Ching speed and power look it’s beneficial but it’s it’s it’s no real guarantee so what’s your what’s your rort there there’s definitely no so here here’s the problem with gaining distance it’s it’s important yes but what we found inside a game for I might be wrong I will confir I will verify if I’m wrong but I think this is the number off the top of my head I think as every 10 yards of distance we gain if we gain more than four or five% dispersion rate on top of that so every 10 yards I gain I can gain a little bit of dispersion but if I get higher than 5% dispersion as I keep gaining 10 yards it’s not worth it gotcha so so here here’s the fallacy the further I get if I’m in the rough it matters it does matter now some athletes it’s less but what we’ve learned like I said we train proximity circles um so out of the rough at 100 yards is almost like hitting 180 out of the Fairway with the same average proximity you kidding say that again say that again please hitting out of the rough at 100 yards for most not now there are outliers and you can write on me and hate on me it’s fine I’m a big boy I can take it but the math showed us that it’s about 80 yards different on tour from being in the rough to hitting out of the Fairway so what is a tour player hitting from 180 eight iron yeah they’re hitting a some sort of wedge at 100 yards so it’s not a full wedge it’s a it’s a version of so the average proximity actually is about 80 yards right so when people say Fairways are not important like we say for predicting score but Fairways are super important if it’s taken away from our proximity chances so so we you know so here comes the full swing guys coming back you are super important the the ability for your athlete to hit the Fairway is is ultra important unless it’s not again there are outliers I get it there are outliers there’s there’s certain dudes certain women that just it doesn’t matter right they’re just it’s okay like their dispersions are good enough so like I said we track dispersions inside of the system um so here’s a cool so we actually say we can tell you what percentage of shots from each distance bin from Zer to 10 all the way out to 250 yards how many of those shots should be within 20 feet the Mendoza Line for 50/50 is about 130 so at 130 yards you should have 50% of your shots inside of 20 feet and 50% outside of 20 feet so this goes back into how can we make birdie I love talking offense trust me most people want to talk defense I love talking offense so in my head I’m like if we can get to a point where we know at 130 130 yards 50 55 inside of training maybe we’re up to 60% of our shots inside of 130 or 20 feet and in man it’s a go like go go go go like we’re not hitting away from stuff because I know at a certain percentage I cannot but hit 20 feet in then so again by training by building the understanding what I’m capable of and applying that when you play I mean it it really takes the the myth and the and the mysticism of golf away because I know what I’m capable of I need to put myself in positions that I’m very capable of scoring and if I can put myself in those positions Boy golf is fun problem is we don’t put ourselves in positions we’re really good at we’re putting ourselves in positions where we don’t train and we’re not very good at golf is very hard okay I a couple more questions I’m going to let you go you’ve been fantastic um first off let’s just a pure mechanics thing actually no I want to go to the one the 130 yard observation which I love so you said you know that’s the Mendoza Line If you 50/50 there inside of 20 feet you’re basically on the the good end of stuff yep um people I think you’re that and then they go like flag hunting but inside of 20 feet like if it’s cut four four Paces off the left hand edge of the green there’s a bunker down there 20 feet right of the flag so you’ve moved your target is the natural smart play am I right yeah yeah it is so you know kind of what we say inside of anything inside of the scoring system what you need to do is make sure that we hit the green right yeah um oh so green in regulation first green in regulation’s huge that that is scoring right but but we got to have a certain number inside of 20 feet so if a Pen’s tucked and I’m a certain shape player I want to make sure that my 20 foot ring if I hit a really good shot which I should be I’m hitting more than not inside of this ring I want to make sure that ring is on the green so maybe I do have to aim a couple feet left or CP feet right because I need to understand that um something we talk about in game Forge all the time uh We’ve created videos and we’re getting ready to drop this in the system we do finger dispersions from the Fairway each finger is roughly 3% right the average tour player is five to six% so in the Fairway you could hold up two fingers kind of like aimo you’ve seen I’m putting on the green people hold up the fingers you can take this to the Fairway say take two fingers if I’m a draw player a right-handed draw player I’m taking out out to the right bring it back left I can put up two fingers right of the flag and say that is my average dispersion that’s when I hit it really good nine would be average for all shots four would be 12 which is as bad as tour players Hit It Tour players basically 99.9% of all the shots are within 12% roughly 89 90% are within three 56 or within two so you hold up your finger dispersions and you can really start to predict what my shape shot is so there’s your targeting piece right you know there’s other systems that tell you how to Target by whatever hold up your fingers those are your dispersion rates so so I can actually make informed decisions on where to Target and how to Target by holding up fingers and seeing pieces slide over I saw Keegan Bradley do that in the Fairway a couple weeks ago they had a picture of them holding up fingers in the Fairway it’s brilliant okay I mean that that’s allowing you to take what you train and apply it on the golf course and apply a better way of doing it so it’s easy if you’re going at the flag you’re can use put your finger over the to the on the flag and then you move so fa if you in the Fairway you just go from the middle of the Fairway and you measure it that way too yeah you come off the tea box so tbox I do three fingers and you would adjust what’s my normal shape shot and this is where training is important I’ve got to train and understand what are my and track man’s flight Scopes they’re all great at this but you can hold it fingers doesn’t cost 20K good lord gave you three of them uh you can actually hold up and actually predict your lateral dispersions and again if I know that 50% of my shots are inside of 20 feet and I know it’s within a certain dispersion rate I know my shot shape is a right to left so my Miss is going to be what a push decent path kind of match and push so I want to make sure that when my push is going to be in the outer edge of my target so even when I hit a push I’m in play I’m on the green I’m so again when you start to understand the numbers you can apply very simple applications to get better I’ve had a lot of college players using it it’s actually starting to show up in the tour um we’re getting ready to shoot a video series next week uh here in Charlottesville we’re going to expand this a little bit more I’m not a full swing guy but it applies short game it it applies everywhere uh but but it gives you that good sense of again what everything everything we need to do is what is our number we’re trying to achieve what are these dispersion rates or what are the proxim we have all that for you uh what do I need to train to let’s train to it maybe I start at four fingers and our goal is to get to three fingers and we go to three fingers and we go to two fingers you know a 100 shooter is a 20 20% dispersion rate it’s m massive right so if each one of these are three so five’s 15 so that is your average dispersion wherever you stand in the Fairway that you are from a flag stick you stand at 150 yards and you hold up eight fingers and you’re like that’s like three green wids wide that’s why I don’t hit greens because I’m not good enough at controlling the golf ball so again it’s understanding scoring is super duper easy scoring is hard the the the application of golf is challenging but there’s no reason that if if a schlub like me can understand how to score everyone should be able to understand how to score and again get rid of a lot of the conventional wisdoms get rid of a lot of the complexity that we’ve tried to add you know some of us just to make us sound smart or some of us just because we don’t know you know but let’s rip apart all these constructs that are holding us back and let’s actually get players thinking score and how to score and if they if score is their goal the training path all the pieces fall into place the worst thing we can do as a coach is take a piece that’s not very very important right now and spend our time there yeah okay uh got to ask the followup to your fingers thing because I know just enough about aim point to be dangerous if I’m doing if I’m doing the target is it like with a straight arm or do I keep the arm bent or is it just relaxed out it’s relatively straight arm here here’s the beauty of the system everyone’s finger every so it might be 3% it might two and a half percent it doesn’t matter if you’re training with your fingers and you understand inside of training when I hit 10 balls at this distance seven out of 10 end up within three fingers so now I can apply that when I go to the golf course I’m at this distance I know 70% of my shots are going to end up within these three fingers however I lay it out yes what is that for confidence oh my God I know 70% of the time I’m gonna pull this off opposed to uh oh you’ve just Unshackled so many golfers yeah man you’ve taken them the handcuffs off that’s what we’re trying to do we we want everyone to love this game as much as I do cool well your passion is palpable um and then okay one more thing the game for app the obviously the more data you have in there the more the predictors you know are appropriate but I’m I’m guessing that as soon as the the folks listening or watching this going and get it you know they could it’ll start making proper advisements to them right away just because of the change of thinking yes yeah I always say the language that we talk about when we talk about offense What It Takes when is it important defense you know how often do I hit it within six feet when I miss the green how if hit within 12 feet those are the big proximity things we talk about noise is crazy Eagle’s double we didn’t talk about that but you can bring me back see it’s a segue so I’m trying to hook my way back into this so there’s lots of opportunities but once you get about eight to 10 rounds in the system which in the summertime shouldn’t be shouldn’t take very long once you get eight to 10 rounds in the system the system is very set um and it’ll really start to be and there’s skills drills it’ll start spitting out for you uh inside the system there’s but again all the piece like everything becomes self-evident and that’s what we want you know when we built the system our ethos was we want everyone to have the same information now if a player doesn’t want to go deep in it fine you don’t have to there’s some very high level easy stuff to read but we didn’t want to hide any piece you know we wanted to be the truth tellers and say here are the pieces that have to move this is what it looks like uh the the round entry takes about depend we have three different segments of Entry um really short quick for high handicappers and we have kind of a two-minute 80s shooter and then once we get in the 70s it might take four and a half five minutes for round um so we’ve really stripped back that that piece and I’m a big fan of and and talking with Dr Mike and I have another guy named Gareth McShay in Ireland that does a lot of learning stuff with me um that reflection period after round and sit down and actually input around is huge beneficial the worst thing you can do like any Learning System there has to be a feedback loop the problem is is a lot of time when we play around if we don’t have that feedback loop and think about what happened so as I’m putting in data I’m going well I could have played that different and then five or six shots come in my head what I could have done different I’ve created a feedback loop I’ve created learning what’s problem with a lot of systems or if their parents are putting in the stuff the kids not doing it or whatever that feedback Loop’s not there we’re not learning we’re just doing and that’s why we make the same error time and time and time again is because we haven’t learned from it so you know I know people don’t like stating I get it I I used to have the threaten kids at the college level to make sure they get their stats in I was that guy man G was yeah I would literally have to threaten them to do it uh but once you get them in and they start to see the progress and they understand what it takes for them to move uh they they’ll buy in and it’s it’s uh it to me that is a huge piece and that’s a piece that you gotta kind of as a player you got to have that reflection period because inside of all drills inside of it there has to be like my favorite short game drill on Earth is when you play around and I used to do with my college players all the time you know I had five opportunities to get up and down today I only got up and down two right the three that you missed let’s go over to the short game facility and let’s recreate it to the best of our ability Now give me three or four shots you could have played from there yeah yeah and then the player will go over there immediately hit three or four different shots well that one worked a lot better what did you just do I just created a learning Loop yeah so the next time in they that situation they’re like oh I remember this the worst thing we can do is go well that was just not good well why would let’s go figure out what what could we have done different you know and so pieces like that and that’s kind of the the beauty of the system is you’ll see the way my brain works and Mark Sweeney’s brain works everything is very logical and Progressive on how to get better like it it is a you know I’ve been coaching for I coach collegiately for almost 20 years Mark AO he’s coached some of the best players in the world inside of putting like we have a a wealth of knowledge so this system was built by golf coaches which is again uh kind of unique in inside of our our Niche field of stat most stat companies are usually created by data scientists and not golfers um so you know we always do a gut check this is really cool does it make sense yeah because you can make you can make numbers sing and we’re like that makes no sense like let’s go back and re refigure that so the beauty of the system again it’s being filtered um through a lot of knowledge and we have a lot of highend coaches that use us and and I’m on phone calls all the time just trying to make us better and how we can be different well you uh my goal behind this podcast is to introduce the bright mind we’ll call him Brown um to introduce the information cuz information is rampant right now and most folks are taking other people’s medicine half the time yeah and they wonder why they’re struggling and then to bring them to a point of understanding and and with what you’re doing here it is logical is the correct term and and that’s where understanding begins so I appreciate you I guess then I want you to sign off with like where do folks go to get Game Force tell us about that yeah you go to mygame forge.com we give you 30 days free to give us a shot if you like it um we do have an IOS app as well to support um we do not do Android sorry inside the system we have like 11 people that use Android so we have not built an Android app just on the sheer fact that we just don’t have enough users you can input through the through the website or the phone app via iPhone uh you can find us at fuel golf TV so if you want to learn more about performance um you can go there I do have a side hustle not a side hustle it’s a a new passion I call it golf Cask uh it’s whiskey and golf Blended together I’m a huge wh look behind me I I have about 130 bottles on the wall I have my putting green this is my putting Studio my podcast studio um uh I’m kicking this off it’s kind of a slow roll out right now but if you’re a whiskey and a golf fan go to golf.tv sign up for free there’s some content and we have I’m bringing data science into the golfy and whiskey World which is just the way my brain works sorry I had to plug that uh it’s to me it was a passion I discovered whiskies in covid because come to find out in state of Virginia the ABC employees were uh essential employees so I started drinking lots of alcohol during Co which drank responsibly golf responsibly uh but to me that was my learning piece right like I golf golf golf and I wow all these whiskies are different set me off on a weird path sorry I just had to throw that in just look if you play if you play golf and you don’t lie baate then I think you’re not doing it correctly so I agree I agree um what if they just want to find you do you do social media or something like that yeah yeah Instagram golfas my game Forge fuel uh you can email me at brianm mygame forge.com um I’m you know you can find me on YouTube for different pieces and whatnot but I’m not hard to find uh I’m also an inpoint instructor so you can find me on the AO website um yeah I love golf if you have a passion for golf and you know if anybody needs help kind of going where you need to go just reach out we’re here to help you’re the best man I certainly appreciate your time and and just appreciate your approach you know I appre yeah thank you on my laptop here one of the screen savers I have multiple and the reminders for me is the instructor inside and it was by Albert Einstein and he’s like if you can’t explain something simply you really don’t know the concept of it and and you are unto something so thank you I appreciate that thank you so much and thank you all for listening how’s
