New Post: #13 Feature Friday

Hi Friends

So here we go part 2 - This installment we will delve into Tony’s thoughts about preparation for playing your best golf and performing at your highest level.

But to start an added vignette to the story of Tony entering Open qualifying off a 5 handicap. This was told to me by an old friend of Tony’s. Just before the qualifying Tony went to a bookies and says “I’ll like to place a bet on this young lad,Tony Adams to win the Open” The bookies were only too pleased to take his money but unsure who this young lad was only offered odds of 100/1 (I’ve heard a couple of different accounts of what the actual odds were, ranging from 100/1 to 500/1) but the point being the odds offered were lower than those of Nick Faldo’s that year!

Now to Tony’s principles for playing great golf - Here is the TLDR

First and foremost get a great coach, that you can have the right relationship with. Someone who will help you play great golf not just make the swing look pretty.

Then,

#1 Smash driver everywhere

#2 Get the ball pin high

#3 If green breaks more than 3% - Miss it on the high side

There you have it. No need to read on.

But if you would like a little more detail then, please do read on,

Tony has worked with a number of great coaches over the years from Matt Belsham (who teaches Matt Wallace and Charley Hull) to Mac O’Grady but the coach he believes has really helped his game move to a higher level is Benn Barham.

Ben was a great golfer in his own right, Winning over 1M euro on the European tour with a best finish of 2nd place and a couple of wins on the Challenge tour.

Tony’s says,

“Benn Barham has been really important for me, I had a relationship with Mac O’Grady and people like that, Matt Barber and Matt Belsham. It was really cool but very technique focused. You have to find the right coach, is the point, find someone that you have that relationship with, how do I get better at golf not how do I swing it with prettier lines”

Then to take each of the other points in turn,

#1 Smash driver everywhere

“and I mean effing everywhere. The easiest way to get longer is hit more drivers and that’s two fold you get more comfortable with it and driver goes further then 3 wood and 3 wood isn’t much straighter anyway. The piece with this you have to find a driver you really like and you have to have to spin it at 2500 revs. Look at the PING charts for your ball speed and your angle of attack. I think thats so important if you are going to live with driver and going to smash it everywhere, get some spin on it”

#2 Get it pin high

“Get it effing pin high, no matter what you have to do, if you have to hit 4 iron and the other is hitting 6 iron - who cares just get it pin high.

This is a outcome expectancy thing, if I hit 20 shots what’s the average. Hit as much club as you need to hit it pin high”

#3 If green breaks more than 3% - Miss it on the high side

Anything 3% or more break with Aimpoint, miss it on the high side. If you get it on that downslope too early your fucked. It misses 3 times as much.

And to be fair Tony has quite a good golfer backing up his point around smashing driver everywhere

Scan the QR code below to see Tiger talking about hitting driver each and every time!

Now to some more questions from the interview,

Q. How do you go about preparing yourself for these big events?

I follow a process to get me ready for any big events, I ask myself, Okay. What have I got to do to sharpen up. What the key skills needed this week?

So, I think the truth is I'm not particularly talented or anything like that, I don’t hit it miles, don't hit it that well, I don’t do anything particularly spectacular except I've got a system for every part of the game. I've got a way of sharpening every part of the game.

And I’ll follow through that process. I’ll ask myself where am I at? what are the stats telling me. Once you've done that, that gives you the confidence to go out and perform, I've done my work, I can go and compete. There's a body of work over a very long period of time. And through the work and previous results I know anything's possible.

Basically I use the stats as my evidence its as simple as that.

Q. Can you talk me through more around how you use Stats

So, I effectively treat my game like a P&L the numbers don't lie and I really like the narrative in numbers. They tell me the story, What can I evidence one way or another? So The biggest problem I think with stats for all players, is the input, so I use Arccos. I use the smart grips, so people don't realise, I'm using Arccos..

Then there's AI with clippd, which is the software that I use, and that gives me tour level insights.

https://www.clippd.com/

Run by some great guys (ed: I concur some really smart guys at clippd) . They've got some stuff coming down the track which I think will be very, very cool, some strategy help and stuff like that and some outcome stuff.

The AI is looking at your game going. Well, what do you do well, what do you do, badly? What skills do you need for this golf course? So that's why I like Clippd, it's giving me tour level data a bit more than than just simply Arccos.

In terms of data I've got 450 rounds. 32,000 shots. I've got 50 or 60, Trackman combines on there as well. Data data! I can tell you now how far I hit the golf ball, right? And it's not as far as you think so I'm the biggest believer in the world of clubbing up, club up, club up and the data supports that.

As an example, one of the things I realised through the data is that I always thought I was quite a good putter. And I wasn't, I was just a good holer outer. I was good from that sort of 1 to 9 foot range, that was very good and probably slightly outperformed what you'd expect from my skill level. The other side of it was, My pace putting was poor. So I knew what I had to work on.

I’m always thinking what requires no Talent to get better, and that's all I'm trying to do. For instance a friend of mine did a, a really interesting test this week, he had his sweat analysed, he's trying to find a new one percent, but he knows how many milligrams of sodium and electrolytes he needs before and during golf, to maintain hydration and I think that those kind of details don't actually require any Talent and it might not make any real difference on a one-off, but actually add them up over time.

My motivation for going into the complexity and detail of technique and the data was born out of the humiliation of fucking it up time and time and time again shooting 80 in a tournament shooting you know whatever it was. That gave me the motivation, I cannot keep doing this. So asking myself, how am I gonna get better? 

Q. Drive for show putt for dough or other way round?

Mark Broady (inventor of the strokes gained metric) will tell you that the driver is more important. What I can tell you there's only been one season on the PGA tour since 2004, where a player was averaged more than one stroke gained per round for the entire season in Putting.

It was Jason Day. So Jason is the only one and the year after him Phil Mickelson just fell short.

So what is the point in me saying that? it's so difficult to gain shots putting. A good driver of the ball like Rory could average plus two shots strokes gained per round.

So it's so it's easier today to make more strokes gained driving then putting

I'll give you a story about England Golf from back in the day, 10 years ago or so. On a what we'd call the white tees golf course, about 6700 yards, England golf were teaching their young age groups. They were teaching them this, We don't need to see your 7 iron or a 4 iron in practice, we're not interested, you are going to smash 14 drivers and then just loads of wedges on the course. so practice those and hole your putts that's what we want to see.

Now, whether you agree with that or not. and I don't know if I do, but that gives you a mentality of trying to go low, it's giving yourself the best chance to play really good golf.

Thanks alot Tony some real gold in there,

Right everyone, lets go and hit some bombs with Driver, take more club on our approach shots and miss our putts on the high side and we can all be like Tony,

Ta ra