287 – Robert Rock pt 2

In part 2, we talk about the Robert Rock Junior Academy, as well his work in coaching some of the game’s elite players and how Robert would build his career if he had his time again. 

A huge thanks to Robert for his time in recording this one with, as well as Little Aston for allowing us to record it at the club. 
 
 To keep up to speed with Rocky, his social media can be found here as well as the Robert Rock Junior Academy here. 

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-cookie-jar-golf-podcast/id1493651992) or Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/2RhNTEu1xA3I4QpUlHBt8H) !

You can follow us along below @cookiejargolf
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/cookiejargolf/?hl=en) / Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/cookiejargolf/) / Twitter (https://twitter.com/cookiejargolf?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) / YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTMcSQBY7eIq1q9DTC50QoA) / Website (https://cookiejargolf.com/)

hello and welcome back to another episode of the Cookie Jar Golf podcast brought to you in partnership with FootJoy this is part two of our podcast with Robert Rock if you haven’t listened to part one please do go back and listen to it we talk about his playing career about when he played in the Abu Dhabi in 2012 and held off Rory and Tiger and few other bits of his his career and how he got up to where he is now in part two we kind of finish off the career and then delve into a bit about his coaching philosophy and the Robert Rock Academy so sit back and enjoy watch this [Music] no way [Music] [Applause] we did one with Mike Clayton at Blackwell oh yeah um with Mike’s Mike’s been on a couple of times actually yeah he’s really good yeah I like him it’s funny because he talks about your story about Bradley Dredge he talked about um he talked about playing Turnbury and when Norman shot something I can’t remember the score now he shot something like 64 didn’t they and he was like it’s you’ve got no idea like I was looking at I thinking 72 it’s not out there so when I saw him shoot 64 I was like I’ve just got no idea he can do it but we did a really good one with Mike and then something happened with the pod gear we’ve not lost many but that one you lost it it very occasionally happens imagine you know it’s like Yeah you’d just be gutted if you get home and the files corrupt today you’d be like there’s no nothing worse um have we got part one that’s confirmed so so if you’re listening to part two our head of production Tom Mills done a wonderful job with the with the pod well done welcome back another black coffee in front of us i’ve just uh just had praise from Robert Rock so it’s not over the swing though so I was impressed with the cords as well well you probably the first person to ever be impressed with my trousers i get so much abuse for it online but they’re usually burgundy I must say they’re sort of an olive color today there’s a lot of green there isn’t there so is Rob’s got green today he’s actually gone a bit of tonal green as well green and blue are good friends actually i think they go well as a color color scheme together really i think so if you if you don’t like blue as a golfer in the past couple of years you are struggling aren’t you we’ve got a bit more navy here and there for you as well actually as a gift everyone green and blue everyone’s just turning up in different blue tops ridiculous i live in navy i live in navy anyway uh we digress i’m sure people have enjoyed part one uh in talking about your career and and finishing off great story at the Abu Dhabi um yeah reflecting back obviously you hit that huge sort of patch didn’t you within the career where those years were were really good um um I mean that was just the end of an unbelievable amount of practice was it yeah that that thankfully did end in some better golf which was kind of what I what I’d planned is what I hoped would happen um I hoped I would maintain it for a little bit longer than I than I managed to but looking back it was the just pure quantity of balls hit that did it too many they kind of just why you got Yeah that got me to that point uh and then life changes doesn’t it and you just can’t put the same level of intensity into the practice yeah um and I was I was hoping that I might have been I did sort of kind of ride it out for a bit as long as I possibly could but um I hit a lot of balls in that stretch from 2005 to 2012 what does it look like what does a day you know you’re saying you hit a lot of balls what does a day look like so my typical day was um it changed a little bit but mostly it was at the driving range from probably [Music] 8:00 and I stayed there till probably 6 or 7:00 at night and then if I hadn’t accomplished anything which was quite often the case I went home turned my flood light on in the back garden and just hit balls into a net that’s absolutely unreal i did that for pretty sure I did that for 10 years wow you must love the process of that to do that looking back I loved it at times I thought my head was going to explode i hated it it’s difficult cuz like if you like but that is the fun that is the whole fun of what I’ve enjoyed in golf it’s not laying the tournaments it was all that to try and get better yeah and actually doing it yeah it’s difficult cuz I would see this from a from a bloke that goes to a range you buy 100 balls for however much 100 balls cost and you hit 100 balls in about 40 minutes nothing’s really achieved and you’re like “All right suppose I better go.” I imagine you’re not doing that but at the end of another It depends what you’re looking at though doesn’t it so if I’d have looked purely at my shots in the first hour I’d have been right that’s okay go home now but I want I didn’t I don’t remember any of the ball flights I hit in that time i wasn’t I wasn’t even looking at where the ball went it was purely about me building a swing that I wanted to turn my swing into an improved version and then see what type of golfer that made me cuz I had complete faith in actual technique would make me a better golfer so until I’d actually accomplished the swing moves I was after I wasn’t even going to start looking at what the ball did roy did something similar recently didn’t he so he said he locked himself in a with a net for three weeks or something didn’t look at the flight after try that for 10 years it’s very hard to separate output and input as a as a golfer isn’t it it is so hard it depends i was just obsessed by changing my downswing and I thought did you see like bring that to life a bit like I don’t hard to imagine i just knew what mine felt like and I knew it wasn’t good it wasn’t right i could tell it wasn’t right what was wrong with it the hands at the bottom of them in the face hands i couldn’t reliably hit the ball out the middle of the face control my low point control my starting line um I just felt like there was a lot going on at the bottom of my swing that didn’t see didn’t need to be there uh and I was sure of that whilst I could still hit a driver fine I thought this isn’t going to and actually I was probably one of the best drivers of the ball on the tour when I started so Looking back I could have left that knowing what I know now I should have left that alone probably left the if I could have handled it mentally I should have left the swing alone with a driver but I don’t think I would have been able to do that anyway and just learn how to a wedge better is it possible like you say you’ve got yourself in a position where whatever’s happening with your hands it’s it’s good for a driver and then you don’t you don’t like what it’s doing with the wedge is it possible to be world class at both you think so but yeah but they are fundamentally slightly different things with what you’re doing i think so yeah they’re separate i think they’re se you can treat them separately for for certain i mean I I was literally hitting range balls off mats like crap range balls that didn’t fly straight so there was no point watching them but I wasn’t doing it for that purpose anyway it was just something to hit while I was trying to do a move m so actually where it went was irrelevant to me anyway and how are you assessing the move how are you just get videoing it just get videoing videoing it and videoing and and the and the the the frustrating part which happened many days was I would probably spend a little too long sometimes videoing from down the line get the down the line video looking nice and then just at the end of the day sometimes I would go I’ll just check it from the front here and it would look horrific and that just I thought I’ve gone no I’ve gone backwards gone backwards today body dysmorphy swing dysmorphy a whole day and that would be when I went home turn the flood light on start again back at it go to go to bed just raging myself that woke me up at 6:00 and just crack on again did you ever have it where you were like that’s perfect it might have been on the flood lights at home or whatever do you ever have like that no but I had definite days where I’ve worked something out and they were just that was just the best feeling ever it’s like I invented something it was wicked never those days were brilliant that was worth all the that the the effort and and but you’re forever learning in golf so I’ve I’ve I’ve learned loads of things since i mean my swing was really good around the 2009 10 it was really it looked nice i was happy with it i struck it really well but there was still other bits that I knew I needed to get rid of cuz my back was starting to hurt m so I never really got to the end of it up until recently i’m really content with actually how my swing is now but I just can’t don’t have the time to do it well that’s one one of the things when we started this little sort of chapter talking about this when you were really like quite critical about oh shame I didn’t hold on to my game longer or whatever i think it’s this is like in a relative sense to you but your career’s had incredible longevity i mean the fact that you can take yourself down to Walton Heath he retired in 2022 took down last year to Walton Heath to go and qualify for the US Open and then turn up at Pinehurst like it’s an exceptional amount of longevity which I guess some of that is the fruits of building a swing and build and building those blocks and loving the process of developing a game rather than being completely wedded to the outcome that was a really interesting little sort of challenge um cuz I hadn’t played but it was my last opportunity to enter that qualifier and go and play with some really good players right so So right now if I wanted to enter a tournament I can only enter a tournament at whatever level that isn’t anywhere near a US Open qualifier at Walton Hath level that’s got some great players in it yeah right it’s better than quite a lot of tour events so that was my last chance to get straight in an event and just see where my game is after two years and I wanted to just go and play anyway because Walton Heath for a day is quite nice isn’t it um and I’ve always been in the two years since I hadn’t played any tournaments i was still occasionally doing nine holes or just say I wonder what the swing look like today i’ll just clip a few and video it and see what it’s like but without any real rounds of golf under my belt to to know what my scoring was like so I just played and I just I just played good i hit the ball how I thought I was going to hit it but I hit the hold some putts which I didn’t know I was going to do and then I thought the second round would be like the previous year when my back was killing me but I had my friend pushing my trolley round i didn’t wasn’t stupid enough to take the car strap of and I wasn’t playing good enough the previous year so it wasn’t really a thing and well I actually thought I was hitting it all right and I thought I’d got something new to try my putting but I didn’t know it was going to work um and I played with James Morrison who was just great company um and he we both started off really well that day and I thought I’ll just carry on play watch James have a crack at qualifying um and I thought I’d blow my chance earlier in the in the first the first round I played brilliant um and I remember being on the par five the it’s about the 13th down the downhill there’s two back to back isn’t it 13 so I birded 12 and hit my best drive of the day down miles down there and I’m right in between a two iron and a 3-wood to that green and I pondered it and pondered it and stupidly hit the 3-wood topped up and all he needed was a two iron just to run down to the front of the green two puts like we’re talking about scoring right hasn’t got to go on the green it’s just got to go somewhere near the front two put make another birdie i’m going to shoot five under for the round right maybe even six and I talk myself into the 3-wood and then hit this 3-wood that come off with the strongest no spin fly ever and I’m four yards through the back of the green and made six and and absolutely flushed this 3wood as well like you absolute idiot right those are the stupid things you do when you’re not playing a lot right you just scoring you’d have never made that mistake in 2011 my caddy gone don’t be an idiot just two iron even if you thin the two iron it’s going to leave you 10 yards short right you can’t not have a sixt put for a birdie whereas I ended up I was lucky not to be in a hedge really um so I ended up shooting I should have shot six under that round and shot three under james shot five and I thought “Oh well we’ll just go and watch James play my back’s going to be bad for this second round let’s just go and help encourage James to get round.” And it totally swapped into the other the other role where he was helping me play cuz I started off pretty good and um he could tell I was starting to panic at the end cuz I hadn’t done it in ages and he was sort of supporting me through it my mate Carl that came with me he was like he didn’t know what was going on cuz that was his first caddying job and he was just pushing the trolley around and he was trying to sort of calm me down it was it was wicked day it was great fun the ironic thing is that first time we saw you down at Walton Heath if he’ have turned around and said “Boys jump on the bag,” we would have we’d have fought over we would have literally snapped over who’s carrying that bag i I didn’t want I I’ve never really I never really enjoyed having um I like doing things myself right but it comes to a point when you’re doing 36 holes where it’s just it’s too hard it’s too difficult it’s amazing though qualifying for that cuz that’s just like once you once you’re through that you’re in aren’t you that’s there’s no sort of staff really straight in usually it’s regional and national quals and all that stuff haven’t played in two years and I’m in the I’m in book flights to North Hardest tournament you could possibly be in did it present a lot of like logistical problems like oh right I’ve actually now got to book off now other than the fact it made me actually really appreciate um how much money you spend playing a major tournament oh I bet yeah expensive yeah gen generally like you get in a major tournament in the course of playing a 25 tournament a year schedule right and and the you just accept playing a major is something that just gets swallowed up in a process you spend a bit more because it’s a bigger event um but you’re just used to doing it every week and you’re making loads of money so it’s it’s fine and it’s like you’re almost paying paying more to play in the major which it actually I look back on it this year and real I think that’s dafted it’s a major tournament it should you shouldn’t actually really be paying out more money to play a major tournament no that should be I struggle to understand that you should be making more money if you look at what even Sam and I you know we’re looking at hopefully going across and seeing Port Rush this year just trying to sort out accommodation which I imagine is the same problem you’re going to have really late the best I could get i think we got we ended up renting a house for I think it cost like three it might have been $3,000 or something probably quite a good deal it was a good deal right but it wasn’t so I wasn’t staying anywhere flash if I’d have been playing regularly and I’d got in the tournament I’d have probably stayed in like the the main Pioneers hotel which was really cool which would have probably cost me five or six grand um you don’t get any money for the qualifier which I was unaware of which I thought was a bit odd because you do win money if you win national quality open don’t you is that right yeah there’s bit of prize money there so your last money at the US Open’s $10,000 i’d done that the day after I’d qualified so you’re on to a Yeah you and I’m and I know I’m going to a US Open having not played in 2 years making a cut would be a miracle so I’m b I’m just going for nothing basically probably well I did lose i probably lost about We lost I don’t know a few thousand quid for doing it worth every penny but it was worth it cuz it was the best week I’ve ever had at a tournament absolutely loved it but I thought something’s not right quite right here cuz if I would have been a young pro doing that Yeah without any money in the bank to do it you’re still facing the same scenario you’re probably going to miss the cut in the first major unless you’re amazing so what should be a really great experience where you should make a little bit of money to help you on your way you’re not going to so I think I think that that lower end prize money needs to shifting cuz top top ends for Well it’s the nature of the game isn’t it can I just clarify it’s when you say the lower end prize mate you don’t make any you don’t make any money if you make the cut do you you get paid $10,000 for qualifying so basically if you miss the cut you get $10,000 okay okay right regardless of whether you finished dead last or 66th or maybe it would be 71st maybe in there wouldn’t it but for a guy who doesn’t like distance putting uphill over the crests of hills Pineus must be the absolute worst golf course nightmare and without the tournament experience um so my only rounds of golf would have been around here then at Walton Heath so Walton Heath Greens weren’t quick they were nice but they weren’t quick yeah so when you’re playing tournament week after week in the buildup to a major you’re playing 11 stimp greens pretty regularly and then you’re just jumping up to 12 or 13s right but when you’re going from eights and nines to then going to play that speed I didn’t have the touch oh well I didn’t have the confidence or experience um recently to know that I’ve got the feel to handle some of the putts that I had so I I purposely aimed sort of doglegged my putts in that first round to avoid hitting it into a part where it might actually run off the green so I I’d hit a good shot onto the green and have a 30footer but I’d aim it six foot right to make sure it stayed on the right shelf and then I would try and hold that six foot of a par which I did really well the first round and then the second one I didn’t strategy to win and just for people that aren’t familiar with like stim readings and I think these these numbers get inflated massively but like in Britain 10’s pretty like rapid isn’t it 10’s good 10’s quick and then getting to 11 and 12 touching on 13 is just like glass yeah ludicrous and then Pinos was a different really speed altogether cuz there weren’t any really any flat points so there was some putts that you just knew weren’t going to stop so you couldn’t leave yourself those you need a long period to adjust to that you can’t just turn up on the week and just be like “Okay let’s just knock 5T off.” No I had to be I had to be really really careful with where I hit the ball and I first round I played lovely and it was probably one of my best rounds but I was mentally absolutely done in at the end of it really cuz every shot was every shot was really difficult the T-shots give or take you get a little bit of leeway with the T- shots there but every iron shot every approach put every second put was really really difficult so you had to you you couldn’t switch off it wasn’t oh just lag this one up and tap it in and go on to the next that was easy enough right you’ve hit an iron shot onto the green you’re really really grateful it stayed on the green cuz you had no control really of exactly where it stayed on the green um and then you had a putt to deal with which could go off the green or if you had a chip or a putt from off the green you had to play those to a point where you knew it would stay on the green so every shot was hard so someone who’s And there was no wind no wind and every shot was that hard yeah so so someone who’s who played that green um Rory’s pet at the end was that was that nails that little swinging little two three-footer four-footer maybe yeah but every short put was hard really yeah every short putt was hard so um I didn’t face that particular p position but that particular put um I would have had similar puts on other greens for certain because they were all They were all as slloppy the 18th wasn’t more slloy than any others right it was he was just unfortunate that he faced that particular put at that moment and in that sort of circumstances where just hard put yeah it’s hard put it’s a hard put there you got to hold it right you’re going to win a major you got to hold it i mean there’s no no two ways about it and and obviously um I’ve never been in that position to hold a put to win a actually to win a tournament let alone a major right so but Rory has Rory knows at the end of it you have to hold a put to win somebody does Bryson hold his he his was a slightly easier put it was a truly exceptional major to watch wasn’t it bunker shot could have finished in the same position as Rory’s and then whoever wins the US Open is the one who holds a put simple as that isn’t it So to get to the end of a re reason why Rory’s won some is you get to an end end of a major tournament you know you’ve got to hold a put to win and you’re not fully in control of what put you’re going to have to win just got to hold it um put a hard put putting’s come up quite a bit in this podcast i’m curious reflecting back on you know 20 year playing career you know if you put a 15-year-old sort of Robert Rock in front of you today how would you build your career differently what would you what would you change because there’s so much that goes between sort of you being 15 and now would you do anything differently do you think yeah it’s a good that’s a good question i would have tried to talk myself into hitting more wedges at the range by the sounds of it yeah being be enjoying the short game more get more enjoyment from it yeah try and find the enjoyment which I did towards the end of once my once my back was starting to hurt and stopping me hitting endless amounts of balls I started chipping and pitching started chipping and pitching more um actually started to enjoy it some some of the fellas that I was coaching gave me little insights into how they how they played certain shots and I thought actually I can’t do that and then being in a closer circle I actually managed to start to understand how they did it which is it’s harder to do from being just that little bit further out um cuz we were sort of not trading tips here and there but I was helping them and they indirectly they were helping me sometimes um Thomas Bjorn spent a good bit of time with my with my chipping and pitching um but once I could start to do the short game shots that I felt that I didn’t really once I was honest with myself and knew I couldn’t do it and I never really spent the time on it and I think I half thought chipping shouldn’t really take that much time so I wasn’t great at it um was never really bothered by it either i would quite a lot of my rounds I only chipped once once around twice around as long as I got it up and down or was functional with it i thought it doesn’t really matter it’s interesting how it’s so linked to enjoyment as well isn’t it and I think it is when you’re getting better you you really enjoy honing the long game and it’s like you say when you’ve got a 15-year-old or you’ve got a kid there you know which is a good segue into the to the junior tour obviously that you you lead i was good at chipping when I was younger and then I just it more more neglect because I spent so much time on the other stuff and I didn’t chip that as many times so one of my if I missed two or three greens around one might be a putt from the fringe one might be a bunker shot and one might have been something from a bad T-shot where I’ve actually just lay up and wedge it on so um it only highlighted itself really when you started playing really really difficult courses with tight flags and when I when I realized that I was actually it was affecting how I attack attack the flags was because I didn’t have some of the shots that I needed you had to play away from them more i played a bit more sensibly but then was put in in a place where actually unlikely to hold the put and I should have attacked the flags a little bit more knowing that I’d got a chip chip that could get me up and down anyway but so let’s um let’s pivot a little bit because you’ve obviously were you’ve become incredibly knowledgeable about the swing how did you how did you get into coaching cuz you coach a lot of the players did you do a lot of coaching on tour and then yeah I was I was always coaching so I started as a coach that was my first job to make money anyway um and then I didn’t do much of it when I first got my tour card cuz I was too just too busy too busy practicing i’d do little bits but not not really with any interest of building a coaching career afterwards i thought cuz I’d already done that at the start and I was already PGA qualified I thought I can go back to doing that whenever I want um and then but as my swing started to get better and I started to hit better shots and started to play better there was just a bit more interest in what I’d done cuz I think people could see that I got better it wasn’t by accident people saw that I was on the range with my camera hitting hundreds of balls every day and my shots started to look better they sounded better and my swing was better so my first first proper client was Ollie Wilson um that only came about through his caddy Richie Hill who was I’d got I’d got Richie working for me while Ollie was on the challenge tour known Ollie for quite a while knew he was struggling richie would always say “Oh he’s in challenge tour somewhere just battling away he’s his driver’s letting him down or whatever.” So I said “Look if he ever wants second opinion or just a bit of a chat or I know I didn’t know I could help I thought I might try and help if he’s stuck and a bit lost.” Um I forget who Ollie’s coach was at the time but he might well have been just playing and not having a coach and then we just got Chain and and a pure fluke as first bit of coaching he won the Donell Links no way yeah so that was a mega week that was an insight into how really good players can just switch back on if you just give them something they like something that just gave him confidence and a bit didn’t change his swing an awful lot in a space of two weeks because you can’t it takes takes months right but I found it we found something that he liked that got his driver working better got him a nice feel for his irons and then he turned back into the the great player he already was and just ran with it and won so wicked and then everyone starts banging down the door then I imagine yeah and that’s a daff thing about coaching right you’re only as good as the players you work with and how well they play same thing happened when I worked with Matt Ols matt was a great player matt would have done great things anyway but because he went on such a good run and and I I did tidy his back swing up a little bit right i make probably no surprise in that but um he was on a really sharp curve of improvement and winning anyway so but people think stupidly think you’re part of the a bigger part of the secrets they come to you I want to swing like Matt Wallace like it’s not gonna happen but you try i often think this i think how many really good coaches there must be there have just never had a I don’t know a Robert a Robert to teach or a Matt Wallace to teach and and they they’re really good and they’re doing amazing things wherever but you very hard to turn an average player into a great player really what about a rubbish player into an average player yes that’s easy oh good there’s hope for turning a normal player into a winner that’s hard exactly on tour you mean so you take a So yeah okay that’s really tough that’s tough because there’s a lot of mindset stuff there as well and just giving them almost whether you’ve done it or not if that’s whether that’s down to the coach or not whether that player was on that path anyway right you don’t know right how desperate people are to win and how and what their careers are going to be like with a different coach they still might have done it like Matt would have probably done it with a different coach whether I got him to a point quicker or later Yeah is it’s neither here in or there do you enjoy it or do you find it’s hard work do you do you see it like I suppose you had like this monklike discipline of I’m going to spend 12 hours hitting golf balls until I perform most pros haven’t got that and Exactly so do you find that frustrating at times or No because they don’t need to like if you’re already pretty good right and you’re quite confident in your skills and you’re just coming to a coach for a particular part or just to do the day-to-day maintenance of a swing and setup and stuff like that you don’t need to hit that many balls but I’m not that interested in doing that i don’t like standing on a range just watching somebody warm up and warm down for a day no right i find it boring and if I’m going to be on a range all day watching somebody hit balls I’d prefer to be hitting balls myself right give me the club come on i can I’ll show you i prefer to be on the range hitting balls and playing the tournament i enjoyed it while I was playing tournaments because there’s a lot of downtime when you’re playing tournaments and you need a bit of a a reason to stop hitting balls cuz you just wear yourself out so I enjoyed it while I was playing and I haven’t done it as much since I stopped playing cuz it’s for that reason you could get one guy teeing off early and then one guy guy teeing off late so you could be on the range from half 5 till the end of the day m I didn’t spend that much time there when I was playing so that was hard that’s hard to do so the coaching is a for the guys that coach on the European tour full time and and I see that they do that and some that that put so much time in that I’ve got respect for how much time they put in i did that when I was playing um and that was my opportunity to do the tour life in the way that I wanted to do it yeah and coaches of AIM obviously made that their career path and that’s what they want to do and that’s their that’s their choice of how they want to do their hard work standing behind on the range there and there’s a lot of I’ve found it difficult to do both yeah there’s a lot of travel as well I guess a lot of travel yeah and and I like I get more out of coaching amateurs because it’s it’s easier to see an improvement yeah i can be on a pro with a with a range uh sorry on a range with a pro and I don’t know whether I’ve contributed anything some days I’ve worked with Lee Westwood for a little bit right and I watched him practice in Portugal when I was just watching right every shot was good that was good another good one literally I was saying that and he looked back at me after one shot that was good wasn’t it i said which one they’re all absolutely amazing yeah yeah so I’m at that point I’m thinking what am I doing here what is your Would you say you have a coaching philosophy is there a way you like to see people swing how does No not not swings no it’s more it’s more more noticing what can what can I do to this person’s strike to make it better strikeers king yeah it’s the most obvious thing to me when I watch somebody hit a ball is it does that sound right is that efficient right is he hitting it just solidly and properly without wasting any of the speed that he’s got is it giving him the right flight is there too much curve on it is there what but mostly I just think strike is first and foremost because it’s what I think you would all relate to if you’re having a lesson and somebody can make you strike it better like that instantly would feel like you’ve improved something I think but if you’re striking it solid I don’t think many people come for that many lessons when they’re already striking if you’re not mishhitting the ball hardly ever right you don’t really go for that many lessons unless there’s a certain shot that you’re consistently hitting that you want to straighten out and that’s pretty easy m so you’re just looking really sort of the minutiae of what’s happening through the grass and you know the divot power the noise and transfer of power and efficiency but then you’ve got to then branch out and I suppose if you’re working with them is it you know you know what elements of the swing and the move just leave that impact and go how can I change impact no no you’ve got to then but but building out to it is because it’s there’s so many different knock-on effects you move one thing everything changes I’ll start looking at that first of all and think well what’s wrong with that strike what’s making that not look right to me and then where where can I chase that back to easy enough to to fix that with what I know so far and then go right let’s tackle this bit first and does that change it and it might a bit or it might do all of it or go from like macro grady with all this stuff then in terms of how to trace things back up that was just how to analyze certain stages of the swing um at a point where we couldn’t really see them all now we can see everything right you can see literally everything on your phone straight away it’s too easy right highlighting what’s wrong in a swing is not hard right it’s not certainly not in mine it’s not Well there’s too many there’s too many good examples of good swings where we’ve got all the detail of the swing in super slow-mo and you can have all the the the Trackman data if you want but you can look at everything without any missing parts and go well all these good players do this and you don’t do that right so you need to do some of that getting somebody to actually do that part and add it into their swing that’s what takes the hard work right but identifying what’s missing it’s not particularly difficult I don’t think um are you a big I’m ask I don’t I think I know the answer are you a big data guy or is it all kind of what you see no no i think um I think I’ve seen enough Yeah that it’s all logged up in there somewhere where I could just when you play with great players you can see what they’re doing um I mean there’s basic fundamentals of scoring I think that that you can just apply to everyone about what things are really important what’s not but um but in terms of the swing it’s not so much no I don’t I don’t I can I think I can see that yeah cuz the collegiate players are chasing trap man data aren’t they you know there’s a lot of you there’s people getting D1 scholarships just on track numbers and I get that right but if you’ve been and around the great players for 20 years you’re in a n you’re in a really select little group of great players that if I was to ask any one want to be coach and if if I was looking back at myself 10 years ago or 20 years ago how would you best like to learn professional golf would it be through devices and data or would it be actually you can have a 20 year road trip watching these best players form your knowledge on that and then try and apply it i mean it has to be the better way to do it because you see so many different examples you can learn loads from data right it doesn’t substitute actually watching people physically do it at close range and talking to them cuz the data still has to be interpreted into a physical movement that you’ve got to understand right there’s got some logic to it otherwise you can have too much progression with this stuff can’t you you can have too much access to to things what ultimately matters is the immediate feedback between hitting the ball and and and what it feels like well it’s coming soon isn’t it trackman’s going to be le linked with AI um coaching tips it’s it has to be doesn’t it ai is coming into everything so it’ll be on your Trackman ranges or your Top Tracer ranges there’ll be a little AI interpreter for coaches that will just say “Well this club path and we’ve videoed your swing this follows that pattern you need to try this.” Right that’s coming that’s quite sad isn’t it that’s how people That will happen can’t can’t not can it no can’t not and you don’t have to book a lesson then do you just book your Trackman book the video you turn it on and do you want tips with it or not and then you end up with the whole generation of people who all doing exactly the same thing cuz I don’t know how long you wouldn’t end up with Scotty Sheffller’s footwork would you but he’s the best player on the planet right now no you probably wouldn’t but some might not even some might choose not to turn that on one day and just like eating balls right how how difficult is it as a coach um to how much of a swing is absolutely ingrained and cannot change and how much of it can you actually manipulate and change as as a player that’s a good question um even after probably hitting a million balls every swing I have now still requires conscious thought to make sure it still follows a pattern because you’ve got something in your swing that is there and you it’s more than likely going to always be there i’m fighting it constantly to to not let it reappear basically and I don’t want to go back to where I was so it’s very hard to move away from the fundamentals of how the body wants to hit the golf ball i don’t know how long it takes to settle in but once it’s there but for me it was I was 24 or five um and that is still part of my swing that that I don’t let reappear basically so I don’t know i don’t know an amateur golfers an amateur golfers I imagine amate amateur golfer got no chance of getting rid of it no chance so once it’s there’s no hope for any of us well there’s no unless it’s something in the setup which you can absolutely kill in a few days practice right yeah but once the swing’s actually in motion if there’s something that that you tend to do that you’ve done for a number of years and you’re I don’t know 30 or 40 years old and you’re not going to hit a million balls in the next few years it’s pretty safe to say that’s going to be there for a while you can stop it occurring but you are unlikely to eliminate it I think sorry this feels like it’s like gatling of questions but that’s interesting um speed how important is speed in golf right now would you advocate speed training as a coach you need to learn it pretty early I think so cuz it’s quite hard to add and maintain later on i could I’ve I can I can do it and I can add speed to my swing but it takes me a lot of shots to get there so that increases the amount of practice you need to do before you play m cuz if if you’re going to rely on a certain speed to hit your shots at certain distance you need to be up to speed before you start my natural speed um wouldn’t be there now i did it when probably I did it when I was about 40 I think and it took me a good half an hour to get up to speed purely hitting balls flat out with no regard for technique or anything right so life or limb yeah but when I was 20 when I was hitting all the drivers when I was younger that was all I did every day was just smash the driver to the back of the range so I probably I I built some of that in early which carried me through to the early years on tour and then I sort of I actually I killed some of it just purely through building the new swing because the best way to build a new swing is do it in slow-mo so I didn’t allow myself that many flat out driver shots cuz I knew I was going backwards if I did it yeah um so I think once you’ve once you’ve formed your swing and then if you can swing um speed train without disrupting your technique which is difficult cuz when you’re really going flat out that’s when the the instincts and the the the like the old habits might tend to form so it’s best done early I think and then managing it at a certain speed that’s slightly under that m what Bryson did was brilliant cuz he managed to he managed to increase his speed massively while actually keeping a the swing really give or take a little bit of footwork at the end pretty much the fundamental principles of his swing that he that that he’s told me about he actually kept intact really right and it and it was still a really really good swing you’ve spoken to him about that with the swing yeah I met Bryson in look at what year when he the year just before he contended at the masters as an amateur remember he was he was leading right so the January before he came to Abu Dhabi as US amateur champion didn’t know I didn’t know who he was but I was hitting balls on the range and I just heard this guy behind me just machine guning these threewoods his caddy was teeing him up for him and he basically didn’t stop swinging it was like just one after the other one after the other thought that’s that’s quick and sounded good so I turned around ah um new lad right it’s a new guy new guy and he had a really nice swing at that point and I really liked it so I just watched him hit balls for a little bit and chatted to his his coach at the time we had loads of similar interests in swing um technique and ideas and he said “We we looked at your swing as well Robert.” So we picked it apart i picked things I liked picked things I didn’t like that’s fair enough yeah um don’t tell me please don’t tell me and and I just I just sort of stayed in not not in touch as far as calling and texting although we’ve chatted recently about some things but um every time I’ve been at a tournament whether it be coaching or playing that he’s at he’s always stopped and had a little chat about things that he’s figured out and clubs and putting and all sorts yeah he’s a deep thinker isn’t he on it i can imagine like and we had at a similar time we were both doing this measured back swing putting thing he’s way better put than me but it was nice to see somebody else actually was a really good putter that was literally measuring the back swing and and hitting puts like that so okay it’s all right to do that it was amazing when he got when he was like you say to keep the accur when he went when he went and won at wing foot for example where it was just like night and day distance wasn’t it yeah you know people were sort of people getting carried away going he’s just just going harder golf you know and it was it was the death of golf people didn’t realize quite how skilled it was to be able to maintain that accuracy at that club head speed oh it was mega wasn’t it cuz he went from being a a normal driver of the ball basically probably i can’t remember the stats on how he how he how he was driverwise when he first but to the best driver on the planet pretty much and come fourth in a was he come third in a long drive championship or second yeah something like that but just increased the speed like no end but what I liked about him as well is that that he wasn’t scared to try any different form of putting to find something that worked which he managed to do right isn’t it i wish I’d found something like that’s basically what I’ve been trying to do my whole life but I never not smart enough to find something out he figured it out pretty quick um you talked about um doing stuff early i suppose that kind of segus into you’ve got a fantastic junior program why don’t you just tell us a little bit about how that came about and where your passion for junior golf came about um it’s it’s something that I wanted to do but while you’re playing the tour it’s really difficult cuz it’s very very time consuming um and admired Nick Faldo and how he had done his junior series which was which was around just when I turned pro but that was the thing to play in back in the late 90s I think he went through it didn’t he yeah he did went through the great some great players went through it um he did it for whatever reasons I don’t know but obviously just felt uh need and sort of obligation to do it um and then ever since I wondered why nobody else had actually bothered right with having so many great English players in the meantime thinking no one’s doing this right um maybe it’s worth a little go so Natalie Haywood who’s a PGA golf pro from Derby at the time her brother Cadd’s on the tour he put us in contact and she really enjoys staging events said “She wants to do a junior golf event would you be interested in sort of putting your name to it?” I said “Yeah perfect i really want to do it but I just can’t commit too much time to I’ll turn up to it but I can’t i’m still at that point still battling away at my still trying to fix the putting it here still trying to fix putting yeah like God can I do some putting when when we get quite often doing done some putting at these junior events but so she some of the kids show you give you she did the first one right and and it went really well we had it was at the place where she was working we had 40 odd kids from that club and that area turn up and the parents just asked us to do another one so we started with one we we did another one later maybe a couple of months later and then we turned it into three or four and then we’re I think we’re in our we’ll be in our eighth year this year now well the last couple of years we’ve had 25 events each year ran some great courses been That’s a ton of work 25 events it is nat was doing it while she was doing her teaching job she was doing it while she she was head pro at Rotherham for a little bit she’s quit that now to um to do the four the tour full-time again we’ve now got we’re doing 54 whole wagger events as well as the normal events the normal events are for all kids from all starting points basically cuz we both worked at driving ranges and saw that one of the problems of driving ranges is that you’ve got kids that turn up on a Saturday to do a junior coaching session and that’s basically them thinking they’re playing golf m there isn’t any what’s missing in golf in my opinion at the moment is somebody that takes the that fills the gap so you’ve got kids that play on a range that will do that every week and most pros don’t really want to lose that cuz that’s their money earner right which is fair enough right you build it up it’s hard to do a big program you get a lot of kids if one leaves to join a club you probably lost them yeah um and we had I had that the ranges I worked at I didn’t know whether the kids played golf or not right they just turned up every Saturday to come to the range for a coaching session but that isn’t golf right that’s that’s meant to be something that starts you off so we’ve we created a 9-hole nine-hole competition off forward TE’s for people that weren’t members of clubs that hadn’t almost hadn’t even played yet but you could come and enter this nine-hole com all the the clubs had to obviously agree to it but we would get basically beginners playing nine holes or forward TE’s that just come from the driving range that was the idea yeah and then we did obviously different staggered TE’s um red TE’s whites yellows all age groups nine holes 18 holes um scratch events and then now it’s end up we’re doing 54 hole events but yeah we ran some great courses we’ve come to Little Aston we go to Hillside we got the Belelfrey um all over all over the UK really and then we’re going to we’ve been to Langanger a few times now we’re going to Turkey we’re going to we’ve been to Abu Dhabi um so it’s it’s it’s expanded into quite a cool thing and then the the better players as they’re getting older they’re then moving into the FAO series so we’ve managed to strike up a decent relationship with them where we will we’ve done a couple of events together with the Faldo series but also I’m not trying to sit in the same bracket as them as we’re feeding all the handicap progression up to the point where you’re getting really good and you may be considering a career in golf and then you start playing Faldo series or you start playing other bigger events yeah it’s like a pathway isn’t it there’s a proper pathway which isn’t really isn’t fully linked together in in the golf industry in my opinion no we have county stuff which is really protective right clubs do their junior opens but I don’t I don’t because I’ve lost touch with I mean I’m going back like 30 years now from when the summer used to holidays used to come around and you grab them all off the thing and you write out and they were 500 with each but like I think that still exists but there’s no like you there’s no I don’t I don’t know there’s not you can never have enough of these kind of frameworks where you like yeah I want to play on the rubber rock tour and play all these my my tour I would I would probably describe as a real good collection of junior opens around the best courses all on the same tour for every every type of player right so you just enter the ones that you want play all of them if you want but this year we’ve added a team element to it as well nice right so full live full live yeah well it’s just a it just seemed an inevitable thing to do right in America kids play on their teams like school college teams right it’s a real big thing people playing in teams all over all over America and it’s something that goes down really well uh the live tour has highlighted an interest in teams because the juniors went that have been to watch that from my tour that have then come to play in our events afterwards all turned up with team merchandise right and thought well they want to be part of something so we’ve now got 10 teams we’ve split that into 15 members for each team um they’ve all got their own team name and obviously they’re not all going to play every event but 15 of with 15 of them some of them will be in in each event and we do an eclectic scoring for the team so that it doesn’t really doesn’t really matter how many play but they will have a a best score for the day from the team so um that’s gone down really well that’s really good isolating it’s also really interesting to see that there is a desire for team because it’s always always% 100% yeah their their kids have we we sold out our membership because of that quicker than ever really yeah brilliant yeah it’s awesome bit of a punt but it’s turned out into Well hopefully we’re going to get along to one this year i think you’d be and do some stuff and pleasantly surprised at how um they’re fun they’re not we don’t try them other than the obviously the world golf ranking junior events are more serious right um but we’ve got when we come here we’ve got kids playing around this putting green which is which is probably one of the best putting greens you’ll ever I think it’s the best ever have is it yeah so we have a putting tournament at the end um they hang around all day it’s yeah it’s cool we need to round off another uh 50 minutes with you Robert which is really sad because I really enjoyed this but looking back on an incredibly successful and incredibly varied career thank you what are the what the standout you know things you’re most proud of proud of all the work that went into it and then just the one day I got Yeah staffed in it you’ve had more than one day i get it but you you they they don’t you don’t really remember them all to be honest uh I don’t really certainly I thought winning a tournament would be the the thing that I would look back on and and it’s it’s probably not that’s that one particular day I got to play with Tiger just dwarfs everything didn’t think I would get that opportunity and and most don’t do they so from all the the days that were just really difficult when you’re trying to do something that’s that hard right and I found it hard and wondering what you’re going to get out of it in the end and I looked back 20 years later and thought “Oh it gave me that that was worth it.” If I hadn’t have had that I might be sitting here thinking “Oh hell did all that work?” And you only get like a tournament winner would be enough i didn’t want to get to the end of it and had having not won but but stomach’s rumbling here i was going to say you hear that kitchen and mind’s been going for the last 20 minutes um I didn’t I didn’t I thought maybe like I I was totally not content with my career basically up until I’d won a tournament and I thought “Okay let’s tick that box off cuz the amount of work I put into it I think I deserve to to have got something out of it.” And then I got something that I never never thought even entered Yeah entered the dreams of what you might get when you’re playing around your five handicap around and it and it shouldn’t do should it right it’s so as much as I lucky I I had a I had a chance to to experience it and it ended well for me and whe I don’t even know whether it would be any different whether I won or lost as long as I didn’t make a absolute ass of it but if I’ come second and having played with him in the final round I think that still would have been worth it isn’t that funny though and it’s a good way to close the pod but isn’t that you know it is almost just like golf in of itself it’s all the hardship and then occasionally it just gives you that one thing that’s like that was totally worthwhile actually yeah and I think you most pro mirrors the game of golf most pros would look at it and maybe give you one or two highlights of of lifetimes effort on it um so yeah I’m I’m more than grateful for for that but the the fun of it was hitting the balls it wasn’t actually going to playing 400 tournaments tournaments were hard they were difficult every one of them was difficult really up maybe a maybe a handful I might have been playing well enough to really enjoy and not really cruise through but just enjoy playing cuz I was playing really good but I was still practicing really hard at that time so it the the standard is is amazing somebody gets to a really low score every week don’t they so there’s no time to turn off unless you’re one of those exceptionally gifted players that just can hold it at that level it just plays good all the time right a Rory just plays good all the time doesn’t he all the time that’s so rare it’s amazing yeah robert just before we say goodbye I think it’s we’ve we’ve gone two hours without mentioning it you dodged us for quite some time i did didn’t I i did i did i did i do that it’s been great to get you on the pod it really has i’ve really enjoyed it i do that quite often to be honest it’s It’s my trying to organize my I’m I’m so busy now that I’m not playing it’s ridiculous i had more time if you’d have come to a tournament I would have done it there probably easier no it’s I get it we’re just bandit apologies but it’s been great i’ve probably got a bit more to talk about these days no it’s been brilliant robert thank you so much for joining us and uh thank you thanks for your persistence well it’s it’s been it’s been worth it every every minute of persistence has been working no it’s been pretty good pretty good thank you so much watch this [Music] no way [Music] [Applause] [Music]