ABOUT THE EPISODE:
Bernie Najar is a PGA of America Golf Professional and the Director of Instruction at Caves Valley Golf Club in Maryland, USA. Recognized as one of Golf Digest’s Top 50 Teachers, and Golf Magazine’s Top 100 Teachers, Bernie works with students of all ages and skill levels. He is perhaps best known for being the coach to World Long Drive Champion, Kyle Berkshire.
Bernie joins #OntheMark to share some insights from his experiences and his latest book: “Speed Power Finesse – How to Play the Three Games of Golf.”
Bernie highlights many game improvement lessons including:
Is it possible for a player of any age or skill level to pick up more clubhead speed and distance?
The most important question – What does your game look like?
Analysing swing videos properly
The definitions of Speed, Power and Finesse and how to practice each element appropriately, and
4 Myths that could be ruining your game.
Bernie also shares nuggets from Kyle Berkshire’s powerful golf-swing, as he takes you on a deep dive to incorporate both power and finesse into your game.
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STREAMING: On the Mark is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
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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For those folks who know me well through this podcast, you know I’m a voracious reader and I’ve got books everywhere. And there’s a new one I’ve added to my collection and it’s from our guest Bernie Nar. Bernie, thank you. And then thank you of course for joining the show. How are you doing? Great, Mark. You’re very welcome and I appreciate the opportunity to spend some time with you and your listeners and viewers. How do you like the book so far? The book’s great for for the folks listening on audio. I just showed it on YouTube. Go and see on YouTube. The last time Bernie was on the show in fact did some awesome de awesome demos from his teaching facility on how to gain more speed and power. That was back in 2022, so a few years ago now. Um the book is called Speed, Power, and Finesse. how to play the three games of golf. And I love the way you broke those down into three games. More about that in a minute. But as I was reading through here, and for the folks, lots of pictures, easy to read, easy to consume, easy to understand, which is a big deal for me. But you did make a comment in the back that I’m like, “Yes, I want to mine this.” And the comment basically was that no matter your age or stage in the game or skill level, you can pick up club head speed. Now a number of experts have been on the show and they’ve said well there’s speed windows where people can you know exploit speed development yet you who’s a master having worked with studs like Kyle Birkshshire and company you’re like hey man even me at 54 and fabulous I can get out there and get some more speed so please share some of the gold over there. Absolutely. Well, I think you know the first thing to keep in mind, your body at any given time is going to have a certain amount of we’ll just say speed potential. Okay? And it’s going to have a lot to do with how you’re training or not training. Mhm. It’s going to have a lot to do with your ability to generate power in a short amount of time. And I’ll come back to that more as we go through the different elements of of what produces a powerful T-shot because it’s important to understand you can stand there and swing your club and register a club speed, whatever it might be, but not get that energy transfer to the ball. Yeah. True. Okay. At the same time, you could swing sometimes this happens to people. They say to me, “Well, I swung nice and easy at that one, and wow, it went far.” Yeah. And then they they will say to me, “Well, you know, I swung really hard. It just, you know, it didn’t work.” So, you have to figure out not only how to go fast within your framework, but you have to always go back to hitting the ball solid because no matter what, if you don’t strike it solid, going faster doesn’t necessarily translate to more distance. So, I always start by saying to everybody, solid contact is your number one priority. But understand a lot of times some of the fastest speeds that I’ve generated myself, I’ll use Kyle Birkshar as another example. He swings 160 plus with the driver now when he wants. So, that’s Wait a second. Different world. I got to stop you there. For the folks who don’t know who Kyle Burkshshire is, he’s a multi- multi-world long driving champ, the guy’s a maniac. The way he hits the ball and he did this post Bernie where he took all the clubs in his bag and basically measured how far or the club head speed he could get with him. And he was getting speeds with his lob wedge that was commensurate with the average driver speed on the PGA tour. And I was like, this is insanity. But it’s so cool to watch though. Absolutely. And you know, Kyle and I spent a lot of time together. He was in town a few weeks ago. We did a little demo for one of my corporate clients. And you know, they’re just always amazed to see someone swinging a seven iron at 125 miles an hour. Yeah. And you know, until you see it in person, you you hear about it, you might see a YouTube video, but once you see it and hear it in person, it’s something that only a few people on the planet can do. And I think he’s one of the few that can actually do it through the bag. There’s some fantastic long drivers out there, but they’re not necessarily golfers. Yeah. So, they can’t hit the irons. The cool thing about Kyle is he totally understands how to maneuver his speeds and trajectory and he’s getting better and better at it, which has helped his regular game. But just going back to the everyday player out there, whoever you might be, whether you swing your driver at 70, 80, 90, 100 miles an hour, maybe you’re lucky enough to be faster than 100. Mhm. You’re going to find within your golf swing some opportunities to be more efficient at transferring energy. It’s rare that someone comes to me and we can’t find something to help them be more efficient. So, it could be, hey, we want to turn up the club speed and we’re going to do certain things to do that. Or we’re going to increase the ball speed at the same club speed. So, for example, I’m going to use some easy numbers to think about. If you’re swinging at a 100 miles an hour and you strike it solid, most people will tell you that in the OEM world, you should be able to get 150 ball speed. And that’s smash factor as well, if you’ve ever heard the term. Yeah. Yeah. Smash factor is that relationship of club to ball speed. So 1.5 is you’re you’re doing great. 151 you’re borderline playing an illegal driver. But what we’re not here to talk about that piece of it, but one of the things you’ll see is somebody will come in and they might swing at 100 miles an hour and they have 150 ball speed. They’re super efficient. They hit the ball 250 yards. They’re like, “Hey, I’d like to hit it longer.” Well, guess what? You’re doing great. But what we can do is look at your body through some evaluations that I do on some power screens and some different things to just see if if we can move a little better, maybe we can ramp up that speed because you’re that particular player is very efficient already with what they’re doing. Yeah, we might find a way to increase. It could be swing length. It could be ground force application. It could be some timing mechanisms to crack the whip a little better. Yeah. But in that case, because that player hits the ball solid, you know, we aren’t necessarily going to get a whole lot more, but every little bit counts, right? You could be a player though 100 miles an hour only generating 140 ball speed. Maybe it’s your driver fit. Maybe you had the wrong club in your hand. With the turn of a wrench, we can change that ball speed 5 10 miles an hour if you’ve been misfit or you didn’t get fit. But at the same time, it could be your impact point on the club face is not very good for the club you’re hitting. You know, maybe we got to move the center of gravity of the driver. We have to move the weight more towards the toe or heel. Or maybe technically you’re doing something that’s giving you the ability to go fast with the club but not deliver the face where you get ball speed. And that’s where we got to make some adjustments. And those adjustments could be again it could be something with your equipment. It could be something with your sequencing in your golf swing. When I say sequencing, we’re all playing golf where you make a back swing. The whole idea of that back swing is to build up potential energy. Mhm. The whole idea of your change of direction is to ramp up all that energy one last time and then transfer it to the golf ball. Yeah. And the longest hitters are really efficient as they arrive near the latter part of their back swing at changing directions. They’re really good at getting energy into the club and they do it in a very short amount of time. And I think a lot of golfers what, you know, they can come in and say to me, well, you know, I think I’m getting too quick or um everybody tells me, you know, I’m overswinging or I’m doing this or that. That very well may be your perception, but just so you know, when you want to go faster, things take less time. It’s it’s the golf swing at the high level and the down swing is a quarter second. So, you don’t have much time to think. But what we need to do is make sure whatever you’re doing when you load the club into the golf swing, when you begin your swing, that you get energy into it early, that your body winds up properly so that you can change directions in the best way for your body, and that’s going to help you do really well with striking the ball better. And if we can find little nuances that help you, then you gain in all those areas we just talked about. you before I allow you to introduce yourself again, I just want to stay here for a minute because you said so many really savvy things in there and the one thing that sort of jumps out at me is is that the holistic sort of an instructor you are, it’s not like automatically grab uh some sort of a speed stick or a rip stick or or or stack system and just go faster and do the protocols to go faster because, you know, going faster with your club head speed won’t necessarily turn into more ball speed, which is more distance. And I feel like that’s where so many people are missing the boat in their understanding because we now live in the speed and power era because it’s all they’re hearing. That’s a great point you’re making and you know oversp speed tools are they can be really helpful. Yeah. But I’ve seen a lot of people use them where you know I’ll just say to you I have a member at the club I work at who bought over speed training tools and he doesn’t take lessons. I don’t I don’t mind that. And I don’t expect him to take lessons. He does everything. He’s a self-taught person. And I could see him working on the program. And again, I was curious. I wanted to see what is going to happen with this guy because I’ve seen him hit balls. I wanted to see what his pattern would evolve to by doing the training. And you know, in passing, we talk and couldn’t be nicer guy. And he’s in the gym a lot. So, he’s doing all the physical stuff imaginable to gain speed and and to hit the ball longer, but has had very mixed results because he’s just flailing at it more and more out of a sequence that won’t get him to the ball. And, you know, that’s that’s just powerless effort, right? I mean, it’s just you’re putting all this might into something in the wrong direction. And so, you know, look, you’ll know after a while when you do stuff, the ball doesn’t lie. I mean, when you see the ball flying better, uh, that is your best indicator. I mean, just cuz the little machine said, “Hey, you went faster, that doesn’t mean the ball’s going to go further. We still got to hit it solid.” You’re preaching, Reverend. Uh, add to that, you know, not just further. And how about just keeping the ball out the woods cuz like like you talk about um let’s call it things we hearing on YouTube and social media nowadays and there’s these buzz phrase. So you club head speed then quickly thereafter you’ll hear ground reaction force. Now you’ve touched on that. You’ve done a lot of work with Joe Lays. He’s coming on the show. It’s it’s it’s really cool stuff. But I see so many golfers, they’ve done the over speed stuff and then they now ground reaction force and they’re bouncing around the place during their golf swing and they are littering golf courses with golf shots and they’re going hard like you say powerless effort and the ball just getting more and more crooked as opposed to staying straight and in front of them which um just geometrically says that the if you hit the thing straight you know you’re going to advance further down the fairway than something was going crooked. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, it’s again going back to it, you know, if you’re putting the ball in play consistently, you’re striking it well, you can be very efficient with your distance. Mhm. You’re going to find and and I was thinking about Kyle earlier and and I’ll use myself as an example. Sometimes my longest drives, let’s just say the fastest I’ve ever swung a driver, and ironically I was 50 when I did this, was 120 mph. Gosh, that’s that’s incredible. But I just want to get to 105. I was 40. Unfortunately, I was swinging more like 98 to 100. I had a couple injuries that set me back, but we don’t need to go there. But the the reality is I I pushed myself to go faster because I had a goal at 50 to get to 115. All right. And Kyle was giving me hell about, oh well, you know, come on, let’s get 118. And so, you know, again, you got to have friends that push you and and that’s part of, you know, going places you won’t naturally go. But, you know, when you spend time with Kyle, and I’m lucky enough to spend time with some really good players, you get to see things happening at a very high level. But in training to get, let’s say, from where I was kind of stuck in the low hundreds to 110, I had to do some stuff in the gym. I had to do some different ball hitting sessions. Mhm. My straightest drives often times were at the highest speeds. Yeah. That’s great. Which is interesting, right? Yeah. But I will tell you, I hit it longer at 116 mph than at 120. And the simple fact is my driver when I was sneaking up over 118 started to have too much loft. So what would happen? It would go a little bit too high with a little too much spin. So even though I was going faster, I would have had to have built a driver with less loft, slightly different shaft just to to max everything out. But impact gets slippery. You know, it’s like driving your car really fast. Yeah. there’s a point where you just can’t you’re not going to be as good at driving it that one notch faster than you’re comfortable with. Having said that, always trying to be comfortable is not going to work either. So, you got to push the limits. But when the club’s going fastest and it’s timed correctly, meaning you’re getting it to the ball, you’re striking it solid, the face is very stable. Yeah. Just remember with a driver offline hits 85% of where that ball’s starting is the face. Yeah. So if you’re blocking it right or starting it left, it’s a face angle issue. Could be the shaft that you’re playing, the timing of that. It’s a little bit off for your swing. So you got to figure out those things. But the main thing just to know when you want to go faster, understand it’s a different attitude to the swing. You’re not you’re not rolling up to it like you’re hitting a distance wedge shot. You want to go faster, you got to pump some adrenaline into the system. Get your heart rate up. Get your intensity up. And that’ll help you go faster. A lot of people don’t realize that, but once we show them that and get them to experience that during a session, it makes a big difference. Okay. Well, that’s the beauty of this book. Speed, power, and finesse. It’s not just uh it’s a two-edged sword this where you’re talking about the speed and the power and then of course the finesse of controlling the wedges or in layman’s terms turning the long straight drive into a birdie because you’ve hit the wedge somewhere within makeable range. Um quickly before we go there Bernie um you’re the ranked the best teacher in Maryland since like 20 nothing. I mean forever over there. You’re so well respected high ranked instructor. Please tell our global audience a little bit about you before we go uh dive further into power and stuff. Sure. So, I’m the director of instruction at Caves Valley Golf Club. We’re getting ready to host the 2025 BMW Championship and we’re excited to showcase our golf course, newly renovated with brand new greens, uh new fairway grass. They’re definitely going to see a different golf course than when they were here in 21. Mhm. Uh, but I’ve been fortunate enough to be here. This is my 14th season. And I’ve been teaching golf since I graduated college in 94. Been very fortunate to spend time with lots of different players from all age groups, all playing abilities, and just love what I do. Very fortunate to be able to spend time with people through golf and and do the things I love to do each day and think about different parts of the game and how I can help the people in front of me. Yeah, folks. What I respect about Bernie, well, there are lots of things, but the thing that I respect the most is the holistic approach to instruction and you put your money where your mouth is because everyone who sees you gets better right away. It’s not just social media bluster from you. Uh, now to the book. It’s the second book you’ve written. Um, the first one was titled The Game, and you say you told me off the air that you’re working on re-releasing that, so we’ll look forward to that. But let’s get to this. Um, I love the way it’s broken down and I love the ease and the understanding of the read. Uh, but the one thing you do right at the top and this is what I love because my mission as a teacher or was a teacher now a podcaster and a broadcaster is not just the wisdom and the knowledge but it’s helping the receiver of the information make sense of it. And so you’re like, “Okay, right off the top of this book, we’re going to define what each one of these elements actually means because like you’ve already sort of touched there, people are like, okay, I want to pick up more speed.” But they don’t really get the nature of what speed means because all these buzz phrases are flying around in golf right now. And it seems like to me the younger instructors, that’s all they do is they just use big fancy words instead of keeping it nice and simple like you and a lot of the legends of instruction do. So, let’s define speed and power because there is a melding between the two, but they’re essentially different. So, can you do that for us, please? Sure. When you think of speed, it’s pretty much the obvious. It’s how fast that golf club is meeting the ball. So, let’s say the club’s going at 100 miles an hour. The ball has a speed component, and that’s the speed it leaves the face. So, again, 100 miles an hour to the ball. the ball leaves at 150. We can then determine a smash factor of 1.5. Now, those are very general terms, but in golf, you have to be someone that can tee off and generate enough speed to play the golf course you’re playing. So, you know, big picture stuff. If you’re playing 6,000 yard courses or 6,500 yard courses, your speed requirements are totally different. If you want to play 7,000 yard courses, your speed requirements totally different. And if you want to play the PGA Tour or you want to be an elite college player, you got to be ready to play nearly 8,000 yard golf courses. Again, your speed requirements are going to be totally different. So, we got we need to make sure, you know, whoever you are as a player, you understand what you need to go out and have fun. Because you know, you might think, “Boy, I need to swing a 100 miles an hour.” But if you’re not playing 6,500 yard courses, maybe all you need to do is swing 80 miles an hour. So, we want to make sure you have an awareness of what you need to be successful where you’re playing. Now, to me, speed is a skill. Being able to go your max speed is important, but as you know, Mark, and all the people that play out there that understand the different elements of golf, you have to be able to hit what we call off-speed shots where you’re not going at full speed. Otherwise, you’re not going to be a very good wedge player. And you want to be a good putter, well, you got to control your speed on the greens. You want to be a good short game player. As much as you’d like a nice smash factor, a high smash factor with your driver, you’ll be terrible around the greens if you have a high smash factor. So, we have to make these adjustments to play golf. And that’s why I call it the three games of golf. Yeah. Speed, power, and finesse. So, the power piece is, let’s say your golf swing takes one second. You have literally less than a second to build up energy. we’ll call it your power potential and transfer to the golf club in that amount of time. So, it’s it’s not like you went to the gym and someone said, “Hey, um we’re gonna see how much you can deadlift and you can, you know, go over there and put a strap on your back and, you know, we’ll give you as long as it takes to lift that object.” Nope. You only have 3/4 of a second. Mhm. So, and by the way, you got to be able to change directions. Okay. I I I need to stop you there because you you get my mind spinning because okay, Brson Dashambo, you know, was known for he went through this metamorphosis where he basically just got as big and heavy as he possibly could. And I asked him about the power thing and he goes, I was figuring the more mass I carried, the just the harder I’d hit the ball. And I was just trying to be like big and heavy and hard. Mhm. He connected with your boy boy Kyle and Kyle was like, big guy, you’re going about this the wrong way. He goes, “Let’s let’s create a bigger, wider arc, get you a little more lean, a little more elastic, etc., etc.” And Brian picked up more speed for a whole lot le whole lot less work and better health, too, cuz he wasn’t piling in the calories like he was just to get big and heavy. So, so that’s essentially like real life example of what you’re talking about there. Absolutely. And you just need to know like for example, there junior golfers out there that can swing really beautifully. They got lots of speed. The problem though, they don’t have great brakes. You know, they can’t support the speed. And eventually that that can set you up for some injury. And the one thing I would say to everybody out there, you you could be someone that can swing 120 miles an hour, but if you can’t handle it, it’s not going to last, right? So, you want to you it’s a delicate balance. You got to figure out where you are, how much you need to play your better golf or maintain what you need to play where you golf currently, right? So depending on where you are in life and what you’re trying to do, that should direct what your your speed goal should be. But ultimately, if I’m 150 lb swinging at 100 miles an hour, and you’re 180 lb swinging at 100, potentially your mass will add some more ball speed if it’s delivered correctly. But if you get too big, right, you’re going to lose some mobility. And you know, even Kyle has gone through phases where he got too big and his swing got a little short for him or his wrist weren’t working the same way. And there’s always that fine line. I think Tiger might have gotten a little too big at different points. Yeah. And you know, if you watch Tiger as a junior golfer, college golfer, he had this nice flowing long golf swing and obviously had different injuries along the way that changed what he was doing. But, you know, there’s a a balance there of of getting too bulky for golf and being too wiry where you might be at risk. So, those all come into play. And I think what you have to understand is again, we’re all a little different. But if you find you generate more speed with a longer swing, meaning your hands travel in a longer path, like for me, I need to swing past parallel to get to my max speeds. Yeah. So, if I if I’m going to if I’m going to take a rip at it, well, I’m going to be up here with my hands. However, I don’t hit wedge shots like that. Yeah, I hope so. Wise, I love you. Yeah, I’m not going to do that. And and if I just sit there and practice wedges and work on my wedges, my club speed comes down. So, if all I do is work power and going as fast as I can, my short game’s not going to be as good. So, you always have to make sure you’re doing your practice and different segments of the game in a way where you don’t disrupt your timing. But understand, it’s just like these are different programs you have. And and the ultimate golfer, I’d say Tiger in his career, he had different points where he, you know, he pretty much had it all. He could hit it longer than everybody, putt better than everybody, had all the short game shots. Incredible iron player. Mhm. Um, but you know, if you look at the game, who can do that now? Scotty Sheffller, probably. Yeah, absolutely. He’s he’s got plenty of power. He’s got beautiful finesse. He’s putting, you know, when he putts, pretty hard guy to beat. Beat him. Well, well, to well to that, too, it always used to be a thing that, you know, if you were powerful, you had the Achilles heel like Jack Nicholas was critiqued for the wedge game. Not not that the wedge game was bad, but you just for as good as player as what he was. And here in recent days, you know, the knock on Rory Mroy always was that, you know, the iron game was okay, but the wedge game for the number of wedges he hit was way substandard. And he modified his technique. He told me about it some and went to a more spinny ball. And so sacrificed a little bit off the tea, if you will, to to garner and beef up the wedge game. So he there is a personification of the exact element that you speak of and you’re the first guy on the show to talk about it because ordinarily it’s like power power and you’ll hear one go strokes gained off the tea. The closer you get the ball to the target the better you’re going to score. No, the closer you get the ball to the target, the easier you make the next shot within reason. But that’s no guarantee that you’re actually going to do that well. And again, that’s the beauty about what you penned in this book. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And you know, just for everyone out there listening to this, you might find, you know what, you got better hitting the driver, and your wedge game suffered. Yeah. Remember, they’re two different games. Yes. And be okay with having a different setup, a different ball position, a different swing length, because you should have a different set of mechanics to play flighted wedges. We we do not strike a wedge with the same mechanics you strike a driver. They’re not the same swing. And just understand, you might have a bias that is more towards hitting the ball off a tea or more towards squeezing the ball off the ground. It doesn’t mean you can’t get better at the opposite, right? You just got to know they’re different. They’re not the same. You I could stop the podcast right there, but I’m not going to. And we’re going to make this fast because I’ve kept you for a long time. In the back of the book, there are a number of really cool swing sequences which was like that that’s like catnip to me. I love that stuff. Um, but then you’ve got some myths that you bust a little bit too. And I giggled when I looked through them cuz they’re so true. I call these things Advil for the golf swing cuz in the men’s grill room, everyone knows just enough to dole out the Advil to his buddy who’s struggling and they end up really just providing temporary relief. So, how about this? I’m going to pitch you some and have you quickly comment. Um, here’s the first one. Now, we’re talking about the power element of the game. Stay connected or essentially keep your elbows pinned to your sides. Have a go there, please, Barney. Yeah, I mean, look, uh, there have been some instruction that has helped a ton of people with wedge shots and we’ll say the finesse side of the game where you you feel connected. Mhm. Yeah. Ben Hogan was a big believer in keeping the arms close to the body. Mr. Hogan though, when he swung, his right arm actually left his side. It didn’t stay tucked the way he described it. And that’s okay. Your feel and what you’re doing can be different. But the trail arm, if it stays really close to you, that limits the distance your hands can travel. And so, you know, as long as you don’t have a shoulder issue where you can’t lift your arm up, if you allow yourself some range of motion there, that could be worth some distance. But if you’re too busy trying to stay connected, you’re actually killing your ability to go fast. Along those lines, here’s another one. This is going to throw the cat amongst the social media pigeons. All right. All right. Um, shallow the club. You don’t have to sh I actually laughed out loud when I read this because I’m like finally someone say well there a few folks a few of us that are saying this but everyone I got to shallow I got to shallow and these poor individuals right-handers are hitting the right side of the golf course as sure as I talk to you right now. Oh yes. And the the biggest problem you have is you know the golf club whether you know it or not whatever it weighs at a dress we’ll just use a simple metric. We’ll say it weighs a pound in the hitting zone. If you swing at 100 miles an hour, I’ll just let you know it weighs at least 80 lb. Now, it’s only there for milliseconds. Yeah. Mhm. So, if you put the center of mass more behind you at the wrong time, there’s a good chance, like you mentioned, you’re going to have that club delivering shots right of right. Mhm. And if you talk to good players under stress when the club feels stuck, they got to work so hard to square it up. Yep. So, it’s probably not a great idea to put the club where it gets heavier in the down swing and more open and more likely to hit the ball right. No, no, no. But Bernie, Bernie, I I’ve just I’ve just got to get my lead wrist into flexion in the split second that that’s happening over there. Come on now. Surely. Huh? I’m being suspicious, of course. Yeah. No, no, it’s okay. I mean, look, if I take my phone here, Yeah. and and I and I go to shallow my down swing and I do this, you know, for just a little bit of early downswing, as long as I get the center of mass out and around, we’re good. But if you go for too long in this direction, you’re going to introduce some shots you don’t want to see. And again, you’re making the club heavier at the wrong time. And then the counter to that is obviously wrist flexion. You’re trying to square the club face earlier, but then they’re like, “Well, you just got to rotate open.” Now, you work with the most powerful of power hitters. It’s not like he’s turning open like a maniac through the ball. That club’s accelerating in front of him. He’s turning to support it, but it’s not like he’s pulling the thing around him the whole time with a rotation. Yes. You know, Kyle will be the first to tell you, um, when that club gets behind him, it’s not his best swing. And you know, I think what you have to realize with with everybody that’s explosive, when you see long hitters, whether it’s Rory, if you look at Kyle, if you look at Tiger in his heyday, they’re pushing off the ground really hard. Mhm. But they’re pushing into the ground at the right time, and those forces are are moving them out of the way. I mean, there there are plenty of people you you watch a swing and you see, okay, they’re really turning through the ball. The the lead hip’s clearing. Let me go try to clear my hip. Well, if you’re someone that’s tried that, you’ve probably found yourself hitting across the ball. Mhm. Because you’re copying a movement that’s a reaction to the action, you know, and so that’s a big problem with a lot of video analysis is you’re seeing the result of the force that got applied. And if you can understand the sequencing is we’re doing a combination of shearing with the forces. We’re we’re pushing and pulling. And it’s complicated, but it’s it’s athletic. Yeah. And and when I say it’s athletic, as soon as you sense what we’re describing, you’re going to want to get out of the way without even trying to get out of the way. You’re going to your lead side is going to get pushed back. But if you if you try to yank your left foot back or left hip back without pushing into the ground, you’re not going to hit it very well. I got you won’t be the most solid ball striker anyway. Um, folks, this is what I love about Bernie. And look, there are more myths in the book that he dives into how to create speed and power and then of course break it down the three games to the finesse of it all because that’s how you make better scores in the end of this because unless you just want to be a long driver, no, you want to shoot better scores. That’s why you listen and watch the show. So, it’s the three games of golf. But the thing that I love about you Bernie is that you teed us off basically and you got us right back to the same concept now where as you were talking about how the body was moving that look you could be pushing out of the way because you’ve been told or heard ground reaction force and that’s the little bit you know to confuse yourself enough and you end up miss striking the ball. So all of this effort you’re putting in there is is basically become a moot point because the golf swing’s measured by the way the ball was struck and you started us that way and you’re finishing us that way. And that’s why I love what I love about everything that you do. It’s it’s just so pointed in the purpose that the golf swing or the wedge shot or whatever it is has and I appreciate you for that. Well, thank you, Mark. And I appreciate you bringing it back to ball flight because I think, you know, if you if you remember the stuff that happens to you, whether it’s at the range or on the golf course, under pressure, whatever you want to think about, the ball is a great indicator what’s going on. I mean, you can mask some faults with equipment for a little while, but we all have our signature mistakes. And my goal as a coach is first of all make sure you understand the things you need to do for your game and get rid of the things that are a waste of your time and energy. So my hope with this book project talking to you on your podcast here that we’ve cleared up some misconceptions but inspired people to realize you know what I can go do some stuff regardless of age or ability that’s going to help them play better. And more than anything, I want everybody to think about the game as you have these different categories. It’s all right to use different techniques in each category. Don’t feel like your driver swing is your wedge swing and vice versa. And if once you once you understand that and practice that, I know you’re going to get better. Yeah. You’re not going to get better if you keep swinging your wedge like it’s a driver. Yeah. Amen. Um, brilliant stuff. Uh for the folks who want to get the book or the folks who want to follow you, please tell them where they go. Sure. So, Speed, Power, and Finesse is available at amazon.com. So, if you type in my name, burning a jar golf book, it will pop up. You’ll see that title. You’ll also see my first book called The Game: Enjoying Golf on and Off the Course. But if you want to learn more about me and my instruction services, you can visit my website at burninghajar.com. I’m also on Instagram and social media. And my handle is at Bernie Golf. One of the best, Bernie. Thank you very much. I appreciate you joining us and sharing all your insights. My pleasure, Mark. Appreciate you having me on and best of luck to everyone who’s listening and watching this. And please let me know how I can help you with your game. If you have any questions, drop me a note. Look forward to meeting you sometime. Yeah, I’d advocate that. I do all the time.
