PGA Tour Pro Kelly Kraft hops aboard the Train unpack his highs vs. lows, the importance of fundamentals, HOW to actually practice and work on fundamentals, why every golfer should wear a visor, and so much more. If you want 2024 to be the best golf of your life, this episode is for you. The Par Train Podcast is brought to you by Rhoback Activewear aka the greatest polos, qzips, hoodies, shorts and joggers in the game. Seriously… we can’t take them off. Tap this link for 15% off (auto applies in your cart!).
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Welcome aboard the part train I am EV this is serm what’s up my man we are pumped to have you guys on board in case you’re new we help frustrated golfers enjoy the ride again because if you can smile through bad golf you can smile through anything in this video in our
Podcast interview today we’ve got PJ tour pro Kelly craft former US amateur champion in 2011 I believe and coming off a really great end of his last year on the PJ tour this interview you guys are going to absolutely love I think it’s going to help a lot of amateur
Golfers stop doing the mistakes that are getting in their way getting back to basics and I think they’re going to absolutely love this interview so we’ll get you to this interview if you guys like it hop aboard the channel subscribe now and what do they got to do sir just
Enjoy the ride enjoy the ride guys take care go Kelly craft I know you probably like birdies but welcome aboard the part train my man we’re pumped to have you thank you good to be here thanks for having me yeah we’re excited to have you
So I know we were talking off air and I know we’ve chatted on Instagram you’re a watch guy as well we figured this would be a fun place to start what watch did you wear the most in 2023 probably Rolex Daytona okay um the white white face Daytona yeah so is that
Technically the panda this guy right here oh there it is is that the panda is that what they call that yeah the panda yeah nice that’s a solid Choice how many watches are in your collection these days I’ve got like I think like four or five okay that kind of accumulated over
The last I don’t know six or seven years probably okay yeah I think I I gotta ask this question yeah goad I need your opinion too do you think when tiger busted out the tutor or the tag hour excuse me back in the early days that
Blew up the watch just it just we thought he was so cool like having that big watch on after when was there something about that I mean there had to be everybody wanted you know and then they came out with the Tiger Woods Edition like the square tag watch you
Remember that thing yeah I remember my parents got that for me like when I was in college maybe and I lost it and I was devastated and uh I think it fell off in like a lake somewhere where we were having like a lake party and I jumped
Off the boat and it like just slipped right off my arm that’s like a Titanic story The Necklace this is tragic the bottom of a some like who knows Lake of the Ozarks I think that’s good story well I’ve I’ve got a G-Shock recently we won’t go and
Watch this for longer than this but um I felt guilty that I wasn’t wearing my tutor so now I’m like really well now I’m like man do I I want to get all these watches but is it just gonna be like this you kind of go back to like
The one that you really like you love like yeah first one you bought like I bought the first like nice watch that I bought I wanted it was a Panerai uhuh and I bought it and uh I still wear it a lot and it’s not as comfortable as these
Rolexes to wear these Rolexes are light and just like super easy right but the P it’s kind of big and bulky but I always get back to like wanting to wear that and I don’t know why but yeah it’s it doesn’t sit around too long without me
Busting it back out totally yeah there’s nothing like the first one um all right transitioning to visors for one second before we dig in um from a couple hat guys now this this is tough because you’re wearing a hat right now I wasn’t expecting this so I’m gonna have to I
Don’t just like wear a visor around I’m just gonna have to adapt here but I thought you were gonna wear I thought you were gonna be wearing a visor but from a couple hat guys like ser and I to a visor guy sell us on why we should
Switch to a visor why go visor on the golf course and neither of us grew up in the South okay we’re Chicago Midwest guys so you know can we even pull it off would you 100% you can pull it off I mean the big brim the big brim does
Actually protect your face more like when I go back to wearing I wear a lot of hats at home when I play and if it’s like in the summer or super Sunny like my face gets just beat up from the Sun and whenever I wear the visor I don’t
Feel like I get that bad sunburn H that’s not the reason why I wear it I wear it probably because I don’t I started wearing it because I had like kind of longer hair and it just kind of like I thought it looked cool and and I
Wore I actually wored a bunch in college and uh it just kind of kept it going I the Imperial visor is just great with the high brim and I whenever I go to like all these different like nice clubs and stuff I always try to buy a visor with the logo
On it so I’ve got a bunch of like I got a pretty big like visor collection I guess and uh the callway guys were just like you know I asked them if they would do the Imperial visors for me because they were kind of like making their own
And I didn’t love it like the bill was like way too bent on it and once they once they agreed to like order a bunch of Imperial visors and Logo them up for me I was totally in and that’s like all I wear on tour now so it’s
Cooler L figuratively and literally feel like you can like just like roll around town like wearing a visor you know what I mean like go to the grocery store wearing a visor like that’s not like I don’t think that’s cool I mean maybe some people takes guts you know it’s a
Power it’s good like it’s good like pool hat you know like if you’re going to the pool or whatever and I mean it just comes down to great hair Brad Faxon Davis Love Spencer LaVine right these guys know who pulls it off better Kelly you or Keith
Mitchell I don’t know we’ve had this discussion before and uh he’s actually working on a little bit of a visor visor project at the moment right now that he’s trying to on so that could be something cool down the road coming from a couple visor
Guys um we have this thing at at my club that here in Dallas that I play and a bunch of the bunch of the members have all converted to being visor guys since uh I’ve been wearing it and and uh they all go to these nice clubs too and play
And they all get visors with the with you know Pine Valley log or the and they started we’ve started to call like the cocky visor Club you know like cocky golf club logos on making a statement that went yeah I thought I thought the Pine Valley Polo was a statement or even the
Qip but the visor that might be the biggest statement you can make is a Pine Valley visor you go big visor with a PV logo and then you got like Cypress on the shirt and like another belt May a seminal belt you that’s good so um Kelly let’s dig in a
Little bit um we’re thrilled to have you here pump to talk about your career what’s going on with your game and it’s gonna be great for our listeners so let’s look back for a second um 2011 2012 you played some of the best Golf amateur golf in modern history with you
Know with with the US Sam Victory with the Trans Mississippi um then as an amateur you’re t19 at the Aussie the Emirates Aussie open yeah caught at the caught at the Masters so just incredible um you had said in a PGA Tour interview like eight or nine years ago that you
Felt like you really got good those last maybe two years couple years in college yeah so walk us through that clearly you did you know clearly you already a good player playing at SMU but you took a leap talk about that leap and all that success you had what was different yeah
So I mean like going going into college I was I wasn’t I was a good player I wasn’t like a great player I would say and uh I just felt like every year in college from like my freshman year to my sophmore Junior and Senior year I just
Got a little bit better every year I think I won my first tournament in college my sophomore year and then the next year I think I won twice and then maybe the same thing in my senior year but my game really just kind of started to take off and it wasn’t really until
Like my junior year probably where I was like man I think that I want to be a pro like I want to turn pro and uh so I really just kind of focused all my attention on on getting better and and I didn’t really have much of a coach in
College so I started to sort of uh see some guys for my swing and and stuff like that not not just my college coach um but everything was just kind of falling into into place and and I kept with the result results I played more of a bigger summer schedule um and it
Was you know it was just basically being competitive year round and so I felt like shooting a bunch of rounds in the 60s was just like kind of becoming a normal thing for me and uh obviously that last year after I after I finished at
SMU I was going to turn pro um right you know in August like right after school got out um but I won the I won the USM that year and so I wanted to remain amateur so I could play in the Masters so I kind of had to like fill my schedule
Up um to basically April to to so I added in like all these kind of professional tournaments that’s why I went to Australia and played and once you play in those you kind of really get the get the feeling for like how good these guys are sure and seeing that I
Knew I even had to get even better um so that’s why I kind of struggled I think early on um playing some of these sponsor exemptions on on the PGA tour and and stuff like that you know there’s just such a premium on a lot of different parts of your game that you
That you necessarily probably didn’t need in college like what Kelly like for me in college you know I I was never like a long hitter but I mean I was hitting it I don’t know how far I was hitting it back then but you know probably like 165
Ball speed you know like plenty far enough for then and um but it didn’t really matter like where you hit it necessarily like these courses and tournaments that we were playing weren’t set up um you know putting premiums on The Fairway like I remember first couple events like I honestly don’t even know
If I like ever really aimed my driver like I just sort of like hit it out there and then a lot of times it was in the Fairway and if it wasn’t then it didn’t really matter but like on tour if you miss a fairway like there’s a lot of
Holes you stand up up on on the te and you’re like all right if I don’t hit the Fairway here number one I’m not going to make birdie two I’m probably not going to be able to hit the green and so you really just have to
Start I really put an emphasis on making sure I was hitting more Fairways and trying to hit the ball straighter that was the that was definitely the biggest thing and the second biggest thing was how tight they put these pins on these grains and I was always like a
Aggressive hit the ball at the pen guy you know even if in college my coach is like we got to aim over here you know I would aim over there but then I would pull it to the hole you know I just would want to hit it as close as I could
And that took a while to like get used to and like actually you’re like okay I actually do need to hit this just in the middle of the grain you know that sounds so cliche but a lot of times we have to do that even with shorter clubs unless
You just have a perfect number and uh you know putting’s the best part of my game so the more greens I can hit the the more I I can play you know play better so it’s just kind of I kind of had to switch my game to become more
Professional instead of uh and really like take that seriously otherwise I don’t think it would have worked out very well well that’s that’s so challenging and humbling right Kelly because you come off top amateur in the world shooting the 60s consistently like you talked about that was a big job
Swinging free playing relaxed playing loose and it’s like you know it’s almost in a way you have to tighten up and get disciplined focused in a different I mean I thought I was I just thought good I thought I was so good coming out of
College and I was just going to like you know play well in the Masters and then play well in all these other tournaments just like right off the bat and that wasn’t the case and and I just sort of had to like take a step back and go okay
And check my ego a little bit and be like I have to get better otherwise I’m never going to be PJ tour consistently um and uh you know I just switched a lot of parts of my game just to be able to like to do that spent two years
Basically on the corn fairy tour back in 13 and 14 I think 2015 was my rookie year on tour 15 16 season and uh that’s what that was good for was like just learning all how to travel and like actually learning how to play golf not that those courses prepare you at all
For the courses that we play on the PJ tour because they don’t and they should do a better job of that but um it was you know more so just like especially on some of those harder courses actually playing more conservatively but also you know trying to score as low as you can
But um you know you got to shoot 30 under to win tournaments on that tour which is tough but yeah when you go to a place like Tory Pines and you know if you shoot under par on the south course you know you’re gaining ground I mean I
Remember one year there I shot like 75 or six in the last round it was windy and rainy and moved up like 18 spots you know different animal of a golf course totally and we play a lot of those on the PJ tour so it’s um there are a lot
Of easy ones but for the most part even some of the easier courses you can get yourself in trouble way easier uh just because of how how well the courses are set up and where the pins are and you know rough height and all that stuff was
It easy Kelly to lose a little bit of the Swagger from amateur days because I feel like we hear on this show and from a lot of Pros that like they burst onto the scene they’ve got all the success as an amateur um or maybe on you know smaller
Tours and then you get to the quote The Big Show and some people have great success right away but a lot of people it’s an adjustment how do how did you make adjustments but not puncture your self image and your belief at the same time yeah that’s a good question because it’s kind
Of a weird deal because you know I went from I won the US amateur and then I think I was ranked like second or third in the world so you go from like being the guy and getting into any amateur golf tournament really any PGA Tour Tournament that you want to not having
Status yet and having to basically like go through this whole thing again of like proving yourself um to yourself and to like the rest of the golf world and you know I didn’t get out there as quick as I wanted I think I’ve underachieved for my career so far just like I haven’t
Won I’ve got a few second place finishes but I mean my best finish on the FedEx Cup is like 70th so I mean it just goes to show how good these guys are and um it is a tough it’s it’s tough to sort of like just keep that going from amateur
Golf because I think that not every great amate golfer transitions into a great professional golfer um for different reasons and for me it was the fact that I don’t hit it a mile and um I wasn’t hitting it as straight as I wanted to and so I just
Had to change some of those things to become a pretty solid player not like a world beater but like I always feel like I go to a tournament and I feel like I can win you know like yeah if I have a good week here I’m going to be in
Contention on the uh you know on the weekend and I’ve had a lot of those tournaments not as many as I wanted to um I feel like a lot of times when I play well it’s you know I finish you know in the top 25 which is a good week
But it’s not you’re not winning um so then you kind of fall into that a little bit like all right that you know that was a great week or whatever you finish 20th and you’re all happy and everything like that but at the same time like we want to do better than that
Also and when you’re playing week when you’re playing week to week it’s just hard to like stay in that mindset of of you want to be great but at the same time you’re playing for a living too so you’re playing for money and and keeping your card and and all that stuff and
When you start thinking about that kind of stuff it’s I think it kind of can slow you down a little bit at times Kelly you mentioned some something go ahead sir really interesting and I think it’s important for our listeners too you talked about some people just really aren’t meant to play professional
Golf no matter really how good they are and you alluded to it about understanding adjusting to the lifestyle learning how to travel um learning how to live this crazy life can you talk about that and yeah how you were able to figure it out and what surprise you and
Some of the challenges yeah you know it’s it’s it’s a lot it’s tough I mean it’s crazy how much of the golf world even people that know about golf it’s like they think that we just kind of show up on the weekends and make a million bucks and it’s like there’s so
Much more that goes into it like you know we get to a tournament on Monday and for me usually Mondays is like a travel day you get to a tournament on Monday and you’re grinding Tuesday Wednesday you know trying to figure out these golf courses especially earlier in
Your career when you’ve never seen any of these places and so it it’s uh it’s it’s tough just learning that but then also then you have another four tournaments after that so it’s like you’re on a plane on night or Monday to the next event and you know
You got your caddy with you and I’ve been married the whole time I was a professional well I turned Pro when I was yeah I got married when I was 25 so my wife’s traveling with me I think the one thing that was great for us was that we
Waited to have kids for a for a good while and uh it made it a lot easier I think because it was just us two traveling and um I was really just able to focus on my game and getting to where I I needed to be and I think if I would
Have had a family when I was that young it would have been it would have been harder and a lot of guys can do it um but it just seems like a bunch of added pressure and stress when you’re you know it’s not just you or just you and your
Wife doing it and we loved it was awesome we traveled everywhere together and and and you know for 10 years before uh we basically we had a kid and and and I think a lot of guys you know they start young and they they have kids and
Then it’s just becomes harder and if they’re not where they want to be like on the PJ tour and they’re just on the corn f tour I think a lot of those guys seem to stop playing earlier just because it becomes tougher and because it’s not just about them anymore so it’s
You know but the traveling aspect of it is when you’re You’re gone we’re gone 30 weeks a year I mean we play 30 weeks a year and um lucky for me I live in Dallas so I can get it anywhere in like one flight
So if I miss a cut like I usually come home for a couple days but a lot of these guys are just out week to week five weeks six weeks in a row they never come home they can’t come home to like you know see their coaches or wherever
Their coaches are because you know there’s 40 tournaments a year and you feel like if you miss one when you’re that young and up and coming that you’re just going to drop back and it’s going to be harder to get to where you want to be because if you’re kind of fighting
For your card or to get to the PJ tour and you miss a couple weeks from miss a couple cuts you know you’re sliding down those points list and uh you feel like or I felt like if I didn’t play then um I wasn’t gonna I wasn’t G to get
To where I wanted to be I just felt like guys were just going to keep passing me then then it’s like after after a while you just have to stop thinking like that I mean it’s you know that’s like thinking about trying to make the cut coming down the stretch you know
It’s it never works and and uh you really just need to just kind of St take a step back and be like all right if I go home and I skip a week and really get my game right and see my coach and get my body right
Then the odds are you’re probably going to play better when you go back out rather than if you just keep grinding and beating your head in on the same exact things week to week because it’s hard to change anything on the road yeah it’s hard to work on
Anything is golf shape a real thing Kelly because I feel like the the we call them the passengers our listeners um I mean I know personally if I go on a Ridder cup trip I go on an annual trip to Palm Springs with 16 guys right we
Play 27 holes a day yeah my body is just and it’s three days my body’s beat to [ __ ] my hands are torn up and I’m just like exhausted we’re the same age spr but like golf shape’s got to be a real thing right cuz sometimes I wonder how
You guys do it let alone the travel but hitting even just hitting a 100 Balls a day would make I think the average amateur’s body sore yeah I mean this is it’s a lot because it’s it’s a one-dimensional sport so we just turn in this one direction and you have to like
Even your body out otherwise it’s it’s going to get bad I mean even like if I take a week or 10 days off you know like around Christmas time I come back and like the first day I go out and pound balls I’m probably going to hurt myself
Usually like I’ll tweak my neck or a little my back a little bit just because even with that little of time off it’s still everything just kind of tightens up and you still think you can hit it as far as you did last time you played we
Started swinging too hard and and uh you know it’s it’s tough so like for me like I just like you know I do all my activation stuff in the gym with my trainer just make sure the body’s right so I don’t hurt myself and and uh you
Know I did some of that stuff chased and speed and all that stuff and ended up hurting myself from 2020 1920 um and so it’s but yeah you’re right I mean the the golf shape is definitely a thing and some guys are in way better shape than others on tour and
But I feel like all of us do kind of the same Mobility exercises just to kind of keep everything in shape you know like rotational stuff band work just like little muscle toothbrush exercises just a kind of like when you go out and play you you feel like you’re swinging it fast and
You’re not going to tweak anything you know when you’re when you’re doing that stuff every day even if you’re not playing golf I feel way better than if I just cold turkey didn’t do anything so I try not to do that I try to still kind
Of do my gym stuff but um you know sometimes that didn’t work out but and then you’re just gonna be sore yeah Kelly you you mentioned it’s tough to work on things so mechanics so to speak during the season oh gosh it’s so hard this is just a fact I played in
College and when I would get in traps I come off a tournament maybe didn’t play so well or had a bad final round I’d come back to practice with the team you know on Wednesday or well Thursday because we were off on Wednesday and try to work on something and it’s like we
Got qualifying coming up we know and as opposed to just hey we’re thinking about your mind thinking about your course management think about your emotions but you as a tour player I imagine you’re focused on your fun fals but talk us through what that week after may be a
Bad tournament is like with your coach yeah and what you’re working on it sucks because like you probably have a tournament the next week you know or the week after maybe have a week off to like fix things and you never really feel like you can do that much some guys can
Do more than others some guys can play with four different swing thoughts um but I would say the majority of guys can’t like it’s one swing thought probably and I think the guys that play the best are just they’ve bought into one thing with their coach and them have worked on
That they decided is the most important thing fundamentally and they’ve gone with that for a very long period of time that’s partly why I think that I’ve started to play better as of late um and making a bunch of cuts and and higher finishes just because I feel like since basically
Probably March I’ve really just worked on the same exact thing even whenever I play bad we still go back to the one thing and it’s like why didn’t you play well and you take some video and you’re like well you’re just not doing it as
Well as we want you to do it so it’s it’s still the same swing key if you will but it’s just like you just have to do it more and it’s really easy to if you’re playing well to keep playing well be because because you’re not you don’t feel like
You have to go change anything and you can really just like every week you can just work on like wedge distance numbers and you know putting like the speed of the greens and uh you know the grass you’re chipping on at different events and stuff like that and you can stay on
A roll because that’s all you have to worry about and you’re not spending four hours on the Range trying to figure out why you keep hooking it or you know whatever something like that um so it’s it’s just it’s almost impossible to to like play a tournament and actually
Like work on your swing unless you’re working on something that you’re going to work on for a for a while I don’t think I’ve ever played well being like okay I’m not hitting it well I just have to do something totally different this week you know and you try
To and then you get on the first te and you start hitting some weird shots early and you just you just have to abandon it and just try to play golf the best you can because it’s it’s not going to work want to know what his one thing yeah
Yeah what is your one key right now he knows me well at the top of my swing like I’m sure you’ve seen my swing before but yeah um it kind of floats this way like I come like over the top a little bit over top move yet yeah yeah
And so I really just work on in transition everything just kind of going back deeper a little bit deeper and uh not so much because I get like on top of it and Steep and and I’ll lose my face at the ball and so like I’ll hit a lot
Of face pulls but if I can kind of keep my left arm like lower on my on my uh on my chest and deeper then it sets me up for like a much better path and more I can kind of like re hinge the club coming through so I can basically just
Hit these like little holds and not feel like I’m going to lose the face too far left and hit it left so that’s basically like all we’ve worked on for um you know since like almost a year now and uh Sometimes some days it’s just like super
Easy though and some days I’m like really trying to get the club deeper at the top and transition and I’ll take a video and I’m like God that’s like the worst swing I’ve ever made for whatever reason it’s the same feeling it’s just like I don’t do it as well that day so
It’s you know you’re always trying to be perfect in in what you want to do and but some days I feel like I have to go a mile to get it there where I want it and other days I feel like I can just play golf and swing normal and it looks great
So it’s um but I can definitely tell if I’m doing it right by the shot shape if I start hitting these like low left ones that are not in the air then I know I just have to be deeper and because it’ll my attack angle better and everything is
Deeper your phrase like what do you have a funny little phrase that you say to yourself to remind yourself we just say like we just say like more left arm to chest yep not left arm like running away from for me like too much cuz I’ll get
Too much space in here and but if I keep that arm on my chest longer and like because I’ll turn and then my turn will stop and then my arm will just like keep going and that’s not that’s not what I want to do um so it’s basically like just like be more
Connected and a little bit deeper at the top and that’s my kind of my recipe for good shots Kelly we just talked about something like this on our goals podcast that we recorded yesterday about how I made a proclamation to myself I’m a mid single digit not as
Good as Sur but um I realize like I change [ __ ] every week oh every week I have a new takeaway feel and I just realize like you know enough’s enough I got a coach I’m not going to change anything unless we decide it and he’s literally talking to me about the stuff
You’re describing which is we’ve got our process and you hit a shot you ask yourself did I do the thing I’m working on if the answer is no go back and do your thing but you can start to match ball flight like you said low left you
Match that to not doing your thing and then you just know to go back and do your thing what we talked about yesterday was it it seems to be such an energy saver like I’m not draining my energy trying to search or create or change stuff you know what you do you
Know why you do it and you just have to get back to that thing is that fair is it an energy for you oh 100% because then you feel like I feel I feel like now when I go to a tournament like I already know what I’m doing so I find
Myself spending way less time on the Range and more time on the course or the putting grain or the chipping grain um because if you don’t do those things well you’re not going to probably have a great week either so you know I’m spending a lot more time putting just
Because I go to the range and I hit a bag of balls and everything feels great you know then I’m I feel ready and I feel good to go so yeah it’s like way less stress but like going to a tournament like the last coach I worked
With I just felt like our ideas would just they would change so much like week to week and then he wouldn’t come to a tournament and then I’d be at a tournament and I’d do something totally different because it felt right at the time and I would hit it good on the
Range then I’d have a decent result by just going with that like one thought for the week then I’d see him the next week and he’d be like I don’t like where that’s putting you it’s going to be in the long run so then we just go down
Another Rabbit Hole of like something else that he thinks that we should do and it just it just felt like we were constantly there was definitely like an overall place where we wanted to get to but there were just too many different aspects that were changing to get us
There all the time and now I just feel like it’s you know one or two things and that’s where we’re trying to go and everything else is just very performance-based like doing my wedge numbers I know that in order you know I don’t hit the ball I carry the ball 280
And and if it’s firm then I hit it further than you know 300 or whatever but like I’m not a long player and so I know I have to be a great Putter and I have to be great from 50 to 130 yards um that’s where I’m going to make up my
Ground and so I I I have to work on that stuff every day and I’ll do like little wedge tests and stuff like that that my coach has kind of created um just like random wedge numbers and you know I you can do all this stuff on trackman now
And it gives you a rating and we just try to get over a certain grade you know and do that a couple times a day and then all of a sudden you know you’re on the course and you got 70 yards and you’re like I know exactly how far to
Take this one back it’s great or laying up on a par five and you want to be like my favorite numbers with the wedges 85 yards it’s just it’s kind of a sweet thought for me and I feel like I’m going to hit it to like give me every time I
Hit it um and so what a great feeling that must be yeah I don’t always I don’t always hit it to give me but I hit it close a lot uh a lot closer than I probably would chip it if I tried to hit three-wood up there from 280 so yeah um
You know it’s just kind of managing that stuff but when you don’t have to think about your your swing being mentally feeling like so off every week and you’re just like all right I just got to go do my stuff you know yeah or even
After your round you just go even if you hit it well it’s like my cat’s like all right let’s just go hit you know half a bag of balls and just do our drill same drill we’ve been doing for the last six months and just make sure it’s locked in there for tomorrow
And this is so this is so good because the way I’m thinking about it I guess on your behalf um is from a full swing perspective yeah if I can get my body right before the round yeah if I can get my body loose if I can do my pre-shot
Routine Focus commit and and get deeper that’s it that’s it you’re good you’re gonna play well I’m gonna be good yeah now obviously we’re gonna hit bad shots but that’s the thing like that’s what I can control and we’ll see what happens is that fair yeah yeah you’re just
Trying to hit more good shots than you normally do on any given day and gonna play better you’re still gonna hit bad shots you’re still not gonna do great you know but like struggle with uncertain wins and yeah certain Shadows even that it just like bother me and I just feel like I
Don’t swing it as well whenever they’re there but yeah if you just have like a general knowledge of like you know what you have to do then you just try to do that the best you can I mean that’s all that’s all you can do you know what’s
Funny about this serm is we haven’t explicitly talked about it like this on the show before but we usually talk like mental game swing physical but all of this kind of flows into your state and your mental game like the way that you practice how you think about your swing
Like is it creating more stress or is it creating less like this all kind of goes together so I want to ask you Kelly like what is your relationship or definition of your mental game like is that something you focus on is that important to you yeah it definitely is um I think
At times it’s more important than others I’ve worked with a couple mental coaches um just not really that consistently just CU sometimes I felt like I was really playing well but I was also working with these uh Sports psychologists and I felt like we were almost looking for problems
Whenever there maybe wasn’t something there um because when you are playing well it’s much easier to be better mentally it’s just like when you’re hitting at where you’re looking you’re happy you’re not like yelling at your caddy for getting the win wrong or you know whatever it may be
But everything just is kind of going together and whenever I was working with a couple of these Sports psychologists I felt like my game was in decent shape and I really just felt like I needed to stop thinking about thinking and just sort of let just go play golf but then
There’s other times when I was was struggling or or maybe had a warped sense of reality with hitting the ball too many time at at the pen you know stuff like that where you have to check yourself mentally and um you know make yourself play the pole
Like it needs to be played whether that’s hitting a three-wood or a hybrid off the te and hitting a wedge to 20 feet like because you can’t be short long or left you know to the pin and you just have to like really make yourself do that um and it’s easier definitely
Said than done um and then the other part of it is like when you’re not your expectations like when you’re when I’m playing really well but I get off to a bad start or something like that having the right mindset to like flip and start to hit good shots again
And not let what just happened you know be like oh my God I’m so unlucky you know like cuz we all feel like that a lot M and you really just it’s it’s hard not to be like that but at the same time it’s never going to
Lead to good things so that’s kind of where your my caddy and stuff comes in he’s like all right let’s just start over and you know yeah we’re four over after three holes but like let’s shoot even today and then let’s forget about these three holes so then you play the
Rest of the way in and you shoot four under and you’re like oh I played great even though you shot even you know you really felt like you turn it around and it’s harder it’s hard to do but uh and I can always do it that well but um I
Think I’m I’ve become better at that as a as a pro you have to have a short memory out here I mean it’s when you start thinking about stuff you were doing two three weeks ago like the bad stuff it’s it’s never good you always
Try to think about or at least me I always try to think about like great shots I hit or like yesterday on this hole I hit an eight iron from you know 165 like a perfect like hold cut to the right pin and it was you know just was
Everything was perfect about it and my Caddy will remember that stuff too and he’ll be like you need to hit the same shot you hit on you know that that eighth hole yesterday like it’s the same shot right here he’s like do you remember that shot I’m like oh yeah I
Remember that shot so we’ll take stuff like that and like go add that into like the good stuff into other shots um whether that’s at the same tournament or at a different tournament you know you got to remember the good and go with that and not not focus too
Much on like the bad shot you hit from the divot and made double you know on the one hole just you start going down that unlucky route it’s just it’s not good Kelly I love what you said about how to deal with bad starts I think um a
Lot obviously you’re one of the great players there is and you get off to bad starts couple Bogies a double and yeah a lot of amateurs are always getting off to bad Stars it’s common right and then terrible front great back yeah but I think what’s what you said is really
Important because it keeps perspective all right so you go double double let’s take an amateur player double double bogey to start your five over after three just think about par you as Kelly craft you know three seconds on the PJ tour talk about let’s just shoot even
Today yeah when let’s be let’s be honest Even’s gonna get you nowhere but it helps your mind it resets you I had a sports like I’ll just tell me too after you have a bad hole how can I make par the next hole yeah it’s opposed to I
Gotta get it back I gotta make birdier we gotta do this yeah you can’t you can’t try to make it happen too fast you just have to kind of and I guess thinking about you know if you’re if for me like if I’m four over whatever early
And we’re like let’s get it back to even that’s a little bit of like outcome thinking but at the same time I’ve always been sort of good at that about just you know all right we got 12 holes left let’s just try to make four birdies because if we shoot even today it’s
Playing tough like yeah we’re going to move back but you know we can still have a great week like if we shoot even but if we shoot four over it’s you know the week’s over so you know you got to like see see the bigger picture in that sense
And just like try to claw back the best you can and setting little goals like that like get back to even for me has always worked and it may not work for a lot of guys but to me in college even I remember doing that you know my be three
Over whatever my coach be come over he’d be like I know you’re going to get get it back to even and I’m like oh yeah coach I’m going to get back to even for sure so maybe that’s where it came from um but yeah just kind of like setting a
Little like round goals within your round um is always is always is good and like you can even go like the opposite and and go I’ve kind of always struggled with like when I’m playing really well and I’m like four or five under through nine holes and you’re like God I’m going
To shoot nothing today and then all of a sudden you bogey 12 and it’s like you bogey 14 and you’re like and you’re like losing your mind because you feel like you’re playing great and now you’re playing average and so you have to like have that mindset of not getting too comfortable when
You’re that many under par and just like keep going the same way you’ve been going because you’re going to finish the round better than if you just sit there and sort of spin your wheels and go you get comfortable and then all of a sudden you make a bogey
And it’s like I just lost my focus and you know so it’s tough to it’s almost tougher when you’re playing really well to keep playing well and finish out the round or finish out a tournament um than it is to sort of if you play Bad to try
To like fight back I feel I feel like the fighting back part is easier for me than is to keep a great round going or shoot like really low it’s kind of what tiger used to talk about like he just yeah he’ create mini goals right like these little mini games
To keep himself competitive um it’s how he probably made 142 straight cuts um which is crazy let Kelly one other thing I picked out of what you said sounds very similar to something we heard Maria FY tell us from the LPGA Tour which is and it’s really
Stuck with me it kind of blew my mind she said the number one job of her caddy is to remind her that she’s really [ __ ] good yeah and it’s like okay so take a step back let me unpack what that actually means one of the best players
In the world you as well and you need to be reminded that you’re good but then I think about the amateur player if that’s important for you when you’re seeing the ball go through your windows consistently yeah and maybe you’ll get a bad bounce or you miss a green you don’t
Get up and down or you you string together a couple mistakes you make a double like for us that happens all the time we’re not seeing the good ones as often as you so would you say that’s probably even more important is reminding yourself and remembering good
Ones for the amateur as it is for the pro no 100% yeah for for both sides for pros and amateurs I mean yeah I mean you have to remember all the good shots forget the bad ones yeah and just know like deep down that you know if the putts aren’t falling and
You’re hitting it great or better than you usually do then you just have to stay positive and be like they’re going to start to fall here soon or if you’re making all the putts for par and you’re not hitting it well you know you just have to like keep telling yourself well
If I can just hit it a little bit better you know I’m going to keep making these putts and they’re going to be for bird set apart so you just kind of have to really trust like you know what you do well and and trust that it’s going to
It’s going to happen and not want it to happen too fast that’ll just come and my caddy tells me that all the time he’s like dude you’re hitting great you know like and you’re hitting great putts so don’t do anything different they’re going to fall just let it happen and you
Know so then I it’s kind of tells me I’m like okay yeah you’re right you know instead of because all I you know all we really think about is like I just shot even par on that side and I hit nine grains and I missed six putts inside 15
Ft and I made you know nine pars it’s like you start thinking about well is my stroke okay and and then my cat’s going well did you start everything down your line it looked like you did to me and I’m like yeah he’s like all right well
Why don’t I just help you read some of these putts now you know and we’ll get on the same page and maybe he’s got a different read than I do or whatever but it’s always like reminding me and hammering at home that you’re a great put they’re going to fall like don’t
Even worry about it and so yeah it’s kind of crazy that we all have to hear that sometimes too and that you don’t just think it yourself right Kelly what what makes you a great putter or what do you think he’s gotten you to be a great
Putter man I think I’ve always just been a pretty solid putter through my whole career um but I think what’s gotten me to become a really great putter is probably like my form station uh that I just do every day so just gets me in the same exact setup every day I know
Where my shoulders are I know they’re Square my arms um I know where it’s a mirror thing so I know where I want my left eye to be and I get on that thing a lot of times uh before turn around or just anytime and you know like my
Shoulders will be a little open or my left eye will be too far forward um or too far inside the ball and I just it’s just like a a checklist and I just go down the list and I’m like all right I got to feel like my shoulders a little
More closed today because they’re open so I get in the same exact setup every time I play and then all it is after that is just speed work and just knowing the speed of the grains and and uh playing these courses that like in Palm Springs you know like everything
Breaks towards that mountain it breaks away from that mountain more uh so just knowing little stuff like that but it’s really just you know after that I feel like when I put the best it’s all just speed just matching line and speed hammer and the fundamental
Setup I mean it’s so important set setup is the most by far the most important thing and it’s just you know from everything from how wide my feet are to my shoulders to hand position um if I just do that every every day then I’m going to be way more consistent than I
Would be if I wasn’t doing that and pretty much everybody now on the PJ tours has a form station that that they do and I wouldn’t say that that I bet there was 20% of guys that were doing that stuff you know back in when I was a
Rookie like 2015 16 and now pretty much everybody does wow that’s so funny yeah Kelly I feel like we’ve heard this so often like pros they hammer on the fundamentals and I just just remember listeners being like well of course they focus on fundamentals they’ve got awesome swings and and putting strokes
And like that’s all they need to do but now that I’ve started to get real great consistent instruction I’ve learned about the domino effect of if your grip’s a little off or your setup’s a little off you’re going to create something that’s off and now you’re
Going to have to compensate to save it and that dictates everything so it’s like back to basic is even more important for us especially in putting Basics is like key because all good putting Strokes if you just looked at the putter they’re all the same like through the ball they’re all the same
Same thing with ball striking but that’s only through impact on ball striking like everybody’s swings look different some guys have a way more hinge and they take over the top or they Loop it way under with more lag but if you just looked at two three feet around impact
The best ball Strikers in the world like the club moves the same through impact and the putting stroke is so short that you just have to be super Square the longer the putter is square you know you’re just trying to return the putter back to setup like you know 0 degrees
Open or shut you know it’s like you know that’s perfect so your setup might be a little different with like left hand low or whatever but if you can consistently Arc it just you know four degrees back and through you know that’s that’s kind of the way the best Putters
In the world do it and and you know they don’t push or pull putts very much and that’s one thing that I think that form station really helps with is like because it’s instant feedback if you don’t hit a perfect putt you’re going to hit one of the t’s and the ball’s not
Going to go in the hole right and so it’s just it’s instant feedback and when you can can flush 20 balls through there in a row you know you’re stroking it pretty good and you get on the course and you feel like like very rarely in a in in a
Round do I ever feel like I I push or pull putts like ever it’s a good feeling and yeah it is that’s all that work is the best part of my game that’s what people have to understand let’s that’s all every day form station yeah 100%
Every time you go to the course before you play or whatever just it doesn’t like sometimes I do it for like my caddy sets it up on the putting green before I come out and that’s the first thing I do before tournament round and I might only
Do it for like four minutes three minutes five minutes or sometimes I clip a tea or something I’m like huh interesting so I’ll kind of look at my set up and it’s usually because my shoulders are open and I’ll just close my shoulders and then I start flushing
Them again it’s usually something so simple that is fixed by you know in just a couple minutes but that you wouldn’t know you were doing it unless you you know otherwise because you hadn’t been on this this little form station and so when I when I missed putts I just feel
Like it’s it’s because my speed was off I hit it too hard or I hit it too soft usually or just a mystery because that happens a lot too and and we could be changing our stroke and it could be a setup issue and we’re doing something that has nothing
To do with the problem the setup that’s so crazy path yeah it it could all you could you could literally probably get on a form station and and get into a perfect setup with everything Square um get into a setup that you like like some guys like their eyes more over
The ball as opposed to I like mine just on the inside of the ball little inside yeah and you know if you just crank that out every every day or every time you play or even you know for an amateur golfer once a week or whatever just get
Into that doing the same thing every day then you know you’re gonna there’s you’re gonna put better 100% let let me ask you this Kelly what would you say was the not to end on a downer but I am curious because I think it’ll help a lot of people what would
You say is the lowest part of your can you think of a your low Point your low moment in pro golf man it was probably like so I had surgery in 2000 after yeah my hip the end of 2019 20 season and I worked hard on getting back
And I probably could have come back a little bit earlier but it was the co year and I was like I’m just going to wait until next season to start and uh so I started and and my hip felt a lot better um but after after that
Year I just didn’t I kept like I said I kept going down these like rabbit holes of chasing speed and working on different things in my swing that didn’t necessarily correlate to like one specific goal um and there was just a lot of bad results I started hitting it
The ball really short my swing speed went way down um and it would think it was just a combination of like not practicing the right way um just I it started I wasn’t putting that well because I was putting for par a lot that’s always harder
Um and it was just that was probably like 20 20 or 21 was probably 21 like into 22 was probably like the worst I had ever i’ had ever played like I just remember thinking like God I used I used to just be so much better than this you know and I and
I lost my card and I had to go back to Corn fairy finals and get it back um which I did um and and it was just but even after that I come back and I’d play and I still felt like I was searching tried a few different coaches
Type of deal and just really couldn’t find anything that I loved to I bought into it and I and I tried it for a while and it just never have a couple good results then but it wasn’t like there was no consistent like top 25s going on there
Was just nothing to really sort of look forward to um but when I started working with this new coach you know started like a year ago everything started to sort of fall into place and it took a while um but I was really hitting it good uh it just wasn’t seeing
The results that early on then like towards the end of this year and then and then I played great in the fall um it really started to to get a lot better but yeah that low point was like you just never feel like you’re going to be
That good again it sucks well Kelly then you know tell us for 2024 your goals because you did have we’re looking at your you did have a great couple months at the end of last year yeah how do you look into this year and build off the that momentum so we do
Like I all of our goals are like very like stat-based and you know obviously my number one goal is to win a tournament and and I feel like my game is in a great place that I can do that um but you know like I want to be a top 50 um player
From uh 50 yards to 130 yards that’s the number one goal I got to hit more than 65% of my Fairways that’s a goal and I want to be top 10 in putting and if I do those three things I mean I’m gonna I’ll have a great year and so we’re really just
Focused on Performance Based goals like that sure rather than structural swing stuff um because we’re just going to continue to work on these same things and uh really rep out like those wedge numbers and checking my putting every day whether it’s on my form station or in
The Sam putting lab and just making sure everything looks good and then just kind of letting me go play some free golf you know just free it up and try not to worry about it too much but when your game’s in a good spot it’s just it’s it’s kind of
Stressfree um the frustrating part for me right now is I finished I had such a bad first kind of half of the year that I didn’t start playing well until kind of the summer so I lost my full playing privilege just on the PGA tour so I have
Conditional status now which is probably going to get me in you know 15 or 18 events or something like that but I kind of just have to wait for my number to be called and be ready to play whenever it happens um sure but then it’s like you know you got you
Can’t like try to make it all happen at once when you do get your number called you just got to go and do your thing like you normally would do any other tournament if you had full status or not um I just don’t want that added pressure
So I’m just trying to stay ready at home and and uh whenever I get get a chance to play I feel like I’ll be ready it it sounds like to me to sum it up all up it sounds like you were going back to what
Kind of got you to your low Point versus now is you were kind of chasing something that was outside of yourself which is speed and distance and ter your labor I’m doing that yeah yeah you got injured right got injured again right yeah injured again and then um searching
Trying a bunch of different stuff and I think everybody that’s listening has gone through that and so trying to get back and get instruction from a professional to get you it’s making me feel better about my plan actually for this year because you just find your thing that you’re naturally good at you
Got to find the thing to keep working on and then you got your routine and it seems like to me Kelly Surat keep me honest but it seems like what Kelly can teach all of us is it seems Kelly you’re really good at like these are the things
I have to check in on these are the things that I do these are the things that I do well so I’m going to keep leaning into the things I do well I’m not going to try and be anybody else and I’m just going to keep checking in on
The process driven fundamental stuff that lets me play my best and then I’m going to go play and it seems to be that’s how you play free yeah for sure when you just go through all those little checklists every day you know it’s to me I can just go play golf and
You know when I do have this stuff that I’ve been working on like wedge numbers and I have 120 yards like I know exactly how far to take the club back and and um I just feel like I’m way more prepared than I would be if I if I wasn’t doing
That stuff and I was just going to the range and working on making it look pretty at the top because I went through a period of time with a coach that we you know we knew how we wanted to make it look at the top but it was like we
Didn’t really do anything other than like well how is it going to get there you know right and and why doesn’t your body want want to want it to get there and I could make it look pretty but like it was I was swinging very slow and it’s
You can’t play like that just you know you gota to me and that’s what I used to do too like when I first got my card it was like very I was just working on Wedge numbers and uh distances and you know hitting Fades and draws and not worrying
Too much about my swing and I had you know I played pretty good my first you know three or four years on tour and and uh then I got hurt and I started with the whole chasing the speed stuff and um then trying to figure out how to make my
Swing look the way that I wanted it to and you know it’s probably just never going to look the way exactly the way I want it to but it doesn’t have to that’s the thing it doesn’t it doesn’t have to if you’re doing all the if if
You if it’s repeatable right then you’re doing your job and and there’s a lot of other things that you can control um a lot easier than maybe the way you want your swing to look is kind of what I’ve figured out and hopefully it continues
To get better and I think it will um but I’m not sitting there like like and I see you know like even when I play well like in a tournament I’ll see myself on TV and they’ll show me down the line I’ll be like G God that did not look the
Way I wanted it to but I’m trying to do what me and my coach work on so if I wasn’t doing that it would probably look even worse and it’s obviously I’m doing it well enough to play to hit good shots because like you know those shots that I hit they show on
TV are good so I’m doing it well enough and as long as I keep working on it a little bit but the same thing and not like Switching gears and doing something else then I feel like it’s only going to get better and you know doing the
Putting stuff and the wedge work and that’s all super super cute stuff for me to do as well scary with the wedges and the putter yeah gotta be scary with those you’re gonna be tough to beat yeah last question we can’t let him go before
We ask him this Ser my man CAC we pushed him this year 2024 is the year of him back into competitive golf he’s going to try and qualify for a us midam his brothers have all qualified for a usj event he has not this is his year advice
To surm on being a former D1 player the guy cleans up in scrambles and charity tournaments but he hasn’t played in a Solo competitive event in over a decade for the amateurs yeah so what what is your advice to Sur I just haven’t I haven’t played any individual true individual competitive golf College
We’re your Agee so I’ve got the bug to put the time in yeah do a qualifier too my advice would be to gear up for these things but to be go play with some other great players amateurs or some pros in some like uh in some money games and get
The juices blowing and then you have to play for a lot of money I mean I I love to play money games we got some good good games around here with a bunch of guys and that always to me helps simulate like uh tournament golf the
Most when you have to because it’s still individual and when when you’re having to make putts to tie holes or to win holes and it means something you got to make birdies and money games you know so it a m c you gotta shoot a couple under
You know so yeah for sure I can do that with my brothers I love that I love that Kelly yeah so that’s that’s kind of like when I’m sitting at home and I’m trying to I got some time off and I’m getting ready that’s all like all I do is is is
If I’m not working with my coach go through all my stuff in the mornings and then we’ll get a game in the afternoon and we’ll go play and and just staying competitive because you’re probably going to be nervous for you know it’s the first tournament in a while but I
Guarantee you’ll be less nervous if you’re already used to like competing with the boys and like going out and and trying to shoot a shoot a number rather than just going out and like raking putts and playing nine holes and you know it doesn’t you got to put something on it
Love it it’s great well Kelly craft golf on Instagram uh anything else before we go that we’ve talked about that you want to reiterate for the golfers out there or something that we didn’t cover that you think’s important for them to hear I would just say that to all the
Amateur golfers out there it’s you know it’s tough and you don’t get to practice as much as some of the pros do and I think just really dumbing down the way when you do have time to go practice and work at it is really important and just going
Out with like a plan you know and and some days you might just be like you know what screw it I’m just going to go play and that’s great too I think playing is always like the number one like CU that’s what you want to shoot
Lower scores you have to go play golf if you just go hit balls for a year into a simulator or a on the Range and you’re striping it guarantee if you haven’t played golf in Forever then you’re not going to score that well because there’s you know it’s it’s not one shot after
The next you got to learn how to score you got to learn how to do all that so I would say just dumb it down really go out with a plan find a you know a putting aid that you like you’ll start putting better find a coach that you trust take some
Lessons get a good game plan and just work on the same things for a while and you know take those to the course and and you’re basically just trying to take it from the driving range of the putting green and doing the same thing on the course and it’s always going to be
Harder on the course so don’t get frustrated but just try to do it the best you can and and you’re gonna see good results have a plan fundamentals I love it don’t go do a whole bunch of stuff on the driving range yeah don’t be listening to Instagram YouTube instag
Trust me I’ve done it it doesn’t work it doesn’t work it doesn’t work if you find something you’re really like you know try it for an extended period of time and if you don’t see results then maybe try something else but you know yeah you can’t can’t just look at Instagram and
And try to swing one way and then the next day you saw another tip and you try to do that you’re never gonna get any better doing that I’ve I I hope everybody saves themselves the embarrassment of doing what I’ve done at some of the best golf courses in the
World just don’t do it don’t look at Instagram and YouTube before a world class round just work on the same [ __ ] well Kelly this was great this was uh I think it’s going to help a lot of people and we had a lot of fun sounds good good to see you Guys
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Love the content! Been a Spotify listener for a couple years now. Working on my foundation this off-season (posture fixes, takeaway) and can't wait for the snows to melt.