WEBVTT
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And welcome back to the Golf Intervention Podcast.
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It is a great day in Virginia.
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The snow is finally melted.
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People are playing golf again.
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It has been quite a stretch here for the last month, but we are excited to be talking golf performance today on the Golf Intervention Podcast.
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My name is Eric Laden.
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I am the director.
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Of golf instruction at the Country Club of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia.
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I've been there for 19 years I'll be there.
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Another 19 more.
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Sitting here with my co-host, Rob Fails.
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He is the player development leader.
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There we go.
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Yes.
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Nailed
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Wow.
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I think that's the first time,
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Nailed
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you've ever gotten it, right.
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On the first, first try.
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see PE people can
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That's right.
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learn the Boars Head, the Boars Head Resort, which is in Charlottesville, Virginia, home of the number one ranked U-V-N-U-V-A men's golf team.
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Did I see
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Yes.
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Yes.
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They are ranked number one.
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So cool.
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So I, I, you don't talk tons about the UBA team, although I know you work with some players on both the, the men's and women's
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Yeah.
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Yeah,
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them a
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for sure.
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Birdwood, which is the, which is the course there at Boar's Head, has probably as good of a practice facility.
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University practice
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it's hard to beat.
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the country.
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I mean, really fabulous.
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The team is really, really good.
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LED by longtime coach Bowen, Sergeant, who's just a great guy and a great coach, and a great player.
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Yeah.
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And, uh, he's got that program on track.
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I gotta say Bowen's been coaching them for probably 25
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It's been a while.
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Yeah.
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close.
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Noah, I was at Farmington, he was there and that's been
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Mm-hmm.
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years.
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So,
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Anyway,
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anyway, I'm sure you have lots of good stories about golf performance in the, in the great teams at UVA there.
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but today we're gonna start
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into a new series, which we, we talked about on our last episode, sort of the framework of our golf intervention 2.0 we're calling it.
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So trying to put some series together for the listener to try to organize.
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And, and help
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journey.
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your journey towards better golf performance.
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And our first series is gonna be entitled Game Improvement Theory.
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Oh my gosh.
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So cool.
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So I said last time,
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time,
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try to see it through the lens, hopefully there,
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the listeners picking up on this.
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We think that you can really, basically improve in only three ways in golf, right?
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So there's strategy, there's skill, and there's swing, and there's buckets of stuff there.
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but
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But
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trying to do with these
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with these series is pick a topic
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and then take me.
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you through these, the lens of strategy, skill, and swing through episodes.
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And then describe to you the listener a little bit of context about who you are as a player and how these topics can help you play better golf.
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So I think it's really cool, uh, Mr Fails as we kind of go into what we're calling Golf Intervention 2.0, that were sort of.
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Starting off with a series very similar to how we started off, in one point.
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Oh when we had absolutely, I had no idea what we were
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Yeah.
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Production quality's gotten a, a, just a, a tad bit better since then.
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you should have seen, like back
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Oh my gosh.
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and notes and we'd like be emailing each other and we'd bullet points and we're writing stuff and then we'd record and be like, that was terrible.
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And then we'd like trash it, do it again.
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But that's why
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That's right.
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now.
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We have like no notes.
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We're just
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Yeah.
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we text each other a couple things, we're off and running.
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Um, but it's good.
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And so, know, that first series on why golfers never improve?
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I can't remember exactly what we called it, but that was kind
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Why you might not improve.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Why golfers have a hard time improving or whatever it was.
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We took you through, I don't know, five or six episodes about different stuff., And we kind of laid out a lot of these topics that we're gonna talk about now.
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But I think it's interesting, you know, it's not gonna be the same discussion.
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know, as, as someone who teaches and, and learns all day long, be a different discussion,
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Hope there is.
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Yeah.
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Yeah,
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Yeah, coaches evolve.
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I saw there was this big we'll call it on, social media with somebody trying to call out an instructor of something he said in a video 12 years ago, did you see this?
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I did.
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Yeah.
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ridiculous.
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And the point is, if you're, if you are someone who teaches probably anything and you're still teaching the exact same thing 12 years later, then you're probably not learning anything and you're not growing and you're not doing your students a service.
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So you should be learning and you should be evolving.
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I don't think what we're gonna say is all that different, but I'm just saying we're constantly trying to get better, constantly trying to tell the story a better way.
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That's what teachers do, that's how you grow and you improve, right?
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So.
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We're excited to take this topic on again, slightly different way, but similar to how we started the golf intervention.
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So really fired up for tonight's show.
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We're recording a little earlier than normal, which is kind of fun.
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Maybe we'll have a little more
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Oh yeah.
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episode out.
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And so on today's show, we're gonna take you through the strategy piece golf improvement.
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Okay?
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So golf improvement theory, and then the strategy piece of that.
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So, strategy is, I think something we were talking just before we came on.
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Strategy is something that's, it's, we would define it as non-invasive in a lot of ways.
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would define it as, you could define it as low hanging fruit in a lot of ways.
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You could define it as, something never, golfers, never think about or understand.
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For most of, for me, a long time in my game, I didn't really understand it.
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All I ever try to do is just hit the ball better and hope my score's added up better.
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The, the, the idea of, yeah, like we all start that way, that now we have data, you know, data has really driven sports performance and all levels and golf is not immune to that.
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So today we're gonna talk some data for sure.
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Like this is gonna be a data-driven episode.
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We have some numbers, in front of us that we talk about, where we kind of contextualize the player that we're speaking to.
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Some of what we talk about today, kind of just kind of, it's like a blanket to everybody that plays golf should have some of this stuff.
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Uh, but then there is slight tweaks between the level of golfer.
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So when we talk strategy, fails and we're like with a student and.
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They're looking to improve and maybe they say something like, I need a playing lesson.
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This is what
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Yes.
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is what I get a lot.
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Which I think
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Yeah,
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I mean, it's really the place where you introduce it, and you, they say, I need a playing lesson'cause I don't really know what I'm doing.
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And that's where this comes
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right?
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that, isn't that where, where you see this, so where do we start with strategy?
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Yeah, a hundred percent.
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So I think we're gonna probably be doing this, In a lot of our episodes, honestly,'cause I think it's, it's never, it's never a, a bad idea to hear it multiple times, but it all starts with who you are as a golfer, right?
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So, thanks to, and this originally came from Game Forge, but thanks to some metrics that we have.
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We can basically take the levels of golfer, and tell you pretty much what metrics are gonna be most highly correlated with your improvement, right?
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So we say level one golfers shooting higher than 88.
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There are pretty much only two stats we say that you really need to keep track of as a level one golfer.
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Again, if you're averaging higher than 88, take your total score and then subtract your total putts, right?
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So you're gonna keep track of your total score and your total putts.
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And then by subtracting your total putts from your total score, you're gonna get another metric, which is called shots to green.
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All right?
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So it's basically the number of times that you make an intentional swing from all of the tee boxes until the ball gets on the green.
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Right.
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So, shots to green for a level one golfer to get, to get to the end of level one.
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So from a beginner golfer, all the way down to,, you averaging 88, you're gonna be looking at getting all the way down to 52 shots to green on average.
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So if you start to track your score again, take your score, take your total putts, right, subtract your total putts from your total score, ask yourself, Hey, am I in the ballpark of 52?
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Am I 53 or 54?
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Am I all the way up at, you know, 57, 58, 59 60?
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You're gonna wanna also be in the, in the ballpark of about 36 putts, total putts for that round of golf.
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So again, for who you are, just take a look and say, Hey, you know, where is the bigger difference?
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Right?
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And, and just keep in mind that as we kind of move through this, is that generally speaking, the shots to green number.
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Comes down at a faster rate than the total putts come down,
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Mm-hmm.
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So to get you from, I don't know if faster rate is the, is the correct term there, but, to get from, from level one all the way down to level four, right?
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You're gonna have more of a difference in the shots to green, then you are gonna have in the putting, right?
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So just keep that in mind and you'll see this kind of as we, as we move through that, but shots to green and total putts.
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We're gonna talk more about where those shots to green happen and why they get inflated for level one golfers.
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But just know that those are the two stats that you pretty much need to keep track of.
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You're looking for, you know, 52 low fifties shots to green, and then mid thirties, mid to high thirties for, for total putts.
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Okay?
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So once you get to level two, now these golfers are averaging from 88, so entry level two all the way down to 76, right?
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So the end of level two, you're averaging 76, which is a huge bucket of golfers we say all the time.
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And what really moves you down that.
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Scoring bracket is really gonna be, again, it, it is technically still shots to green, but it's more specifically your greens in regulation.
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So it's the number of times that you stop the ball on the green in two, less than the par value throughout a round of golf entry.
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Level two golfers are about six greens in reg, and then the end of level two, shooting 76 on average goes all the way up to 10, which is huge.
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That's a, that's a big, big, big difference in greens and reg.
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And just to show you all the difference in here, the end of level two golfers, are they, they've got about 32 putts, so just think about that.
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Like we went from 36 for end of level one to 32 putts, end of level two.
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That's only four putts.
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That's only four shots different on the green from 88 all the way to 76.
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It's only.
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Four putts different.
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Again, most of that shots to green and more specifically the, the greens and regulation getting on the green in two less than the par value.
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So on a par five, getting on the green in, in three shots or better.
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All right., Level three, these golfers are shooting from 76 to 72.
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And again, now we start to, the game starts to change a little bit, right?
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To get you from 76 down to 72.
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Not only is it greens in regulation, but this is where birdies start to become a thing and actually making some birdies starts to become more important for your score.
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So we track what's called in positions, which is basically when the, when the ball is on the green and regulation, but less than at or less than 20 feet from the hole, right?
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And so these golfers are looking to get in the six to seven range in terms of their, their in positions., Total putts down to 32, 31, right, is kind of what we're looking for.
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So again, like.
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Again, how different is that?
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Not that much different.
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It's like one putt better really.
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Right?
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It's one putt better.
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But again, you're, you're getting some birdie looks, you're getting some,, birdie opportunities, and you're cutting down on those, on those shots to greens still.
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I would expect the greens and regulation number here to be closer to 11 to 12 really.
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Right.
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So again, reducing shots to green, but it's really, yes, it's, it's greens and reg, but it's really those birdie opportunities when you're inside 20 feet.
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Alright.
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And then level four, just which we, we actually introduced at, I'm not sure exactly when we introduced the level four concept that you actually brought this up.
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And I thought it was a great point'cause tour players trying to say the tour player should be in the same bucket as someone averaging 76 is not, that's, that's not a thing.
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They are, they are different.
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Right.
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So, impositions go up to about seven to eight range and then they are less than 31 putts.
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Right.
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So, again, they just do, they do the same things the level, level three golfers need to do, but just better.
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Right?
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So this is a beautiful example.
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Colin Morikawa this weekend.
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So this is why we can't lump them
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Yes.
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we say they're not human.
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Mor and I didn't watch Pebble.
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I just, I don't watch tons of PGA tour these days, but, just'cause I'm busy.
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But on Sunday, I guess I was in the middle of the day.
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I had a few minutes turn the TV on in between whatever I, what I was doing.
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And Morra Cal was maybe on the 15th or 16th hole and he played Pebble.
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Did you follow the tournament at
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A little bit.
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A little bit.
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Yep.
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he played Pebble back to back days.
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You know, they do the rotation of courses, but he played Saturday, Sunday on Pebble, very windy conditions, off and on, like extreme wind, right?
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He made a putt on that whatever hole I was looking at.
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Dottie Pepper says, you know, that's the first putt of any significance.
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In distance he's made in a couple
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Mm.
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she said.
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Something like that.
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Okay.
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I'm like watching he birded 18 of the 36 holes on the weekend.