Old School Feels for New Repeatable Golf Swings with Tom Stickney

Tom Stickney is a Golf Magazine Top 100 Teacher and a Golf Digest Top 50 International Instructor. He is a specialist in Biomechanics for Golf, Physiology, and 3D motion analysis, and has been a Director of Instruction for almost 30 years at clubs and resorts around the world. Tom is still sought after by leading players on various Professional Tours for help with their respective games.

Stickney joins Mark Immelman to discuss golf instruction, game improvements, and how a number of “Old School” swing ideas and feels are still relevant in today’s game. As he and Mark draw parallels between golfers past and present, Tom introduces the following feelings and thoughts:

Golf Swing Connection by Jimmy Ballard
The X-Factor by Jim McLean
The “Magic’ Right Elbow Move by Harvey Penick
Swinging Barefoot by Sam Snead, and
Rotating and Pivoting “Inside the Barrel” by Percy Boomer
Tom also discusses the motivation for making swing changes, golf swing “Danger Zones,” and how thinking like a kid when creating golf shots is a sure-fire way to success.

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ABOUT ON THE MARK: Mark’s knowledge, insight and experience have made him a sought-after mind on the PGA and European tours. Through his career, he has taught and/or consulted to various Major Champions, PGA Tour winners and global Tour professionals such as: Larry Mize, Loren Roberts, Louis Oosthuizen, Patton Kizzire, Trevor Immelman, Charl Schwartzel, Scott Brown, Andrew Georgiou and Rourke can der Spuy. His golf teaching experience and anecdotal storytelling broadcasting style makes him a popular host for golf outings.

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[Music] The sweet lord only knows why I have not got this guy on the podcast years ago. But here he is. He’s Tom Stcney who is giving us some time from his precious time off down in the keys. Tom, thanks for joining us. Oh, my pleasure. It’s so much fun. You can see my background is all key, you know, it’s all got the keys in. I wish that was my room, but uh you know, unfortunately, I’ve got a beautiful view of the parking lot because I’m spending all my money on scuba diving, not the not the room. You look all relaxed. You looking all relaxed and tan. So, so thank you and let me get me out of your hair. And for the folks who watching on YouTube, you’ll see that that’s a very bad joke cuz uh Tom is got a very cool shiny bald head. All right, Tom, let’s start here because you’re an expert, biomechanical expert. you’ve been, you know, one of the top teachers in the land and in the world in my opinion. Um, but I’ve had this cool interaction with you where it’s occurred to me that despite everything that you’ve researched and what you teach and stuff, you’ve got this old school bent to you and it gets me to thinking to this. I’ve long believed and I’m 54 years young. I’ve long believed that there’s nothing really new under the sun and we live in this age of golf information and technology, but the reality is, you know, there’s nothing really new under the sun. Am I right? Exactly right. You know, the the greatest thing about golf is it’s it’s a continued regurgation uh of these fields and of these thoughts. And as as science comes in, they they prove uh that a lot of these old guys had had some pretty good thoughts to them. Now, we didn’t have all the technology to put it all together. Uh but it’s pretty pretty dog on amazing when you start to look back at some of the things that we’ll talk about here. um you know uh how they had such insight and one of the greatest things to me is when you look back at the search for the perfect swing by Cochran and Styles or you look at the golfing machine by Homer Kelly. I mean these were written years and years and years prior to to to really good video analysis. I mean there’s no such thing as force place. There’s no such thing as as as 3D motion analysis. I mean, these guys dug it out of the out of out of their brains and and what they saw. And it it’s just amazing to me as a techie. I look at it and I go, “Oh my god, how in the world they come up with that?” I mean, thank the good Lord that they that they they figured that out. And then all of a sudden, I start to think about, you know, what would it be in today’s time or where are we going to be in in 10 years now that we know what’s going on with these old school fields to create these new school golf swings? And I and I think that’s that’s what it is. There’s still guys like uh guys like me out there that are using a little bit of mixture of the old and the new and and and I kind of like it. You know, I’m 54 as well, so you know, I’m still rooted in the thing. When I first started it was stand on the lesson and and just watch Ball Flight and then it kind of merged into video and and all the rest of it and now it’s AI and it’s coaching you. So, life is pretty good. It’s been a it’s been a great time to be in the golf instructional industry. Yes. I’m smiling for the audio folks if you’re not on YouTube. Um because what what Tom says there, look, ever since I started teaching golf in 1996, something maybe I was gripped by a a fit of um liberation and intellect where I was like from when the very first shepherd struck a pebble over in Scotland somewhere and then they started hitting featheries and such with wooden sticks to when George Jet Jetson swings a golf club in 20 212 whatever it is their interaction between bowl and club remains the same. Exactly. And and honestly, I think sometimes not only do we over complicate things, but the mistake a lot of people make, and this is why I want your comment because you’re the expert. Sometimes they misinterpret the information or sometimes they don’t look at all the information and they get fixated on like one data point. Am I crazy with that? Uh, a million%. And that’s the one thing that that is the danger of of the social media side of the of the golf instruction is, you know, if you want to if your MO is wanting to learn how to shadow the club. I mean, there’s so much information on just how to shallow the club. There’s so much information on, you know, what pivot post you should use. There’s so much information on any particular topic you can come up with. uh and and it still goes back like we said to some of these old school fields, but now where we’ve got AI, you know, with with sports box and and and like motion to coach and things like that that actually put data on these on these particular motions. But you know what, like MLAN said in the X-Factor, you know, you’ve got to have a certain hip turn, you got to have a certain shoulder turn. There’s a separation between the two and and you know, that’s that’s was proven a long time ago and it’s now all of a sudden we can look at it, we can measure it. So, it’s pretty neat. But that Jim Mlan’s a smart dude. Oh, he’s he’s unbelievable. He and Mike McGee came up with that in 1992 and it was a pretty interesting thing. And so, you know, I think that as as time goes on, we will continue to weed out a lot of the information that needs a little bit of refinement, but we’re also going to find out that, you know what, there’s a lot of stuff that was written a long time ago that was really, really good. Yeah. Okay. Before we get into that, um, I I’d be remiss if I don’t introduce you properly because we have a global audience, Tom. So, please for the for our tribe around the world, tell us a little bit about you. Little bit about me. I’m uh was Golf Magazine top 100 instructor for 15 years. Uh moved off to Mexico and got uh one of the top international teacher awards from Golf Digest. And now I’ve moved back to the states here and uh now in Jupiter, Florida, Jonathan’s Landing Club. And so back in the States full-time and ready to uh tackle the world once again. And uh so I’ve been uh been fortunate to be to be all over the place teaching golf. And uh but for the most part, I’ve just uh dealt with the country club player and really focusing on that. I’ve taught, you know, I’ve taught some guys on tour, some girls on tour, but my calling is definitely dealing with the the country club clientele. I just I just love the the the the struggle that they have. and and you know the carrots of you give them this one little carrot of information all of a sudden man they it’s like you gave them a gold bar you know and and so for me that that just is so much more fun to just you get so much more of that with the uh with the country goat golfers whereas the the tour players are you know it takes a long time to implement a change and you might see a a you know a quarter shot an eighth of a shot or something like that. So that’s that’s kind of where I’ve been and and what I’ve done. You’re being awfully humble folks. his list of achievements is about as long as all the research he’s done on the golf swing. All right, let’s get to it. Let’s go old school or let’s apply old school to new school golf swings. Um, you’ve sent me a list and I’m going to sort of cherrypick some of them and allow you to elaborate. Now, you’ve talked about um the X factor already and Jim Mlan and he’s been on the show and I want you to tee this off because first off, he’s admitted that the X factor was sort of misunderstood 100%. So, so, so describe for our viewers, listener what the X factor is, why it’s still applicable, and and and the elements to it and how it can make golf swings not just more powerful, but certainly more reliable. Well, in golf, you have to have certain things to control the the body. You have to have pivot control. You have to have geometry control. And so, all of a sudden, when you start talking about the pivot, which is how you twist and turn and displace weight, that’s where the X factor comes in. And the X factor is nothing more than the difference in turn between your shoulders and your hips at the top of your back swing. Well, actually at any point in your in your golf swing, but but to to simply state it, if I sit if I stand up and I twist my shoulders like this, I can only turn my shoulders a certain amount before my hips start to turn. And that’s that flexibility. Everybody’s that everybody’s flexibility is a little bit different. And that’s your X factor. So let’s say that I can turn my shoulders 30° and then my hips start to move. So now all of a sudden the hips are at one degree and my shoulders are at 30. So all of a sudden or there’s a 29 degree gap between the two. So all of a sudden that is what the X factor is. Uh that the difference in that gap. And what Mr. Mlean had talked about was the differential at the top between where the hips were and where the shoulders were. So let’s talk about this in in very simple forms, very simple numbers. So if we say that the hips turn 50°, okay, and the shoulders turn 100, there’s a 50° differential between those two numbers. Now, obviously, we have to have some sort of rotation and we have to have some sort of of of winding up or torquing up of the body. What happened to to Jim and Mike McTig when they came up with this X factor is people often thought that okay I need to restrict the hips as much as I can to turn against that as much as I can to tighten that up as much as I can and all of a sudden it got people very bound up and I’ve always said a lesson to you I want stability not a mobilization and I think what happened to to the X factor was people got immobilized they said well if if I have a 50 degree differential in that example I just gave. Well, maybe I can stretch it to 60. Maybe I can stretch it to 70, you know, and all of a sudden before you know it, you’ve got a bunch of people trying to put themselves in physiological positions that they just can’t they just can’t do. And and so I think what happened is when TPI came along with their physiological testing, when um you know Proscreen came by with their physiological testing and we’re using AI so they can actually measure this these these data points. I think we started to realize that yes there is an X factor. Everybody has a certain differential but not everybody can push it to the degree that what we were trying to push it back in the early 90s when it was uh when it was first created. And I think that’s where the big disconnect was. Then I’m assuming uh because you work with golfers of all skill stations that if a person is immobile or or not as flexible, look, it’s one thing to get flexible, but everyone has our limitations, but you’re not averse to some golfer allowing their lead to lift up off the ground as they try and, you know, get a little bit bigger a stretch on the way back. Am I correct in my assumption? 100%. I mean, at some point you’ve got to allow, you know, the X-actor can work in the opposite way. I see this a lot. I see the older my older clientele comes in, they don’t have a very big hip turn because they’ve been so cognizant of staying still. Yeah. You know, and not turning a whole bunch, whether it’s been misunderstood or whether it’s just physiologically easier just to stand up here and and use their arms. But all of a sudden, if let’s say we’ll use that 50 uh degree differential example again. If the hips are only turning 30, well 50 60 70 80 go the shoulders. So if I can get the hips to turn 50, all of a sudden now I get the shoulders turn 100 and I can keep the club in the air a little bit longer. And as we all know, keeping the club in the air longer for the older clientele is what’s going to produce more time for them to create more club head speed. you know, when you’re younger and you can create a higher X factor through and and and some better ground reaction forces and and do different things, which we’ll talk about later on, you know, you can you might be able to get away with some of these things. But the older clientele, I tell them, lift up the left heel, turn the hips as much as you can, get that thing back there as much as you can. I mean, I really like uh Shambli’s book, you know, that what he wrote and and and Brandle talked about allowing the left heel to rise and allowing, you know, going back to more of a old school type of golf swing, you know, and I think there was some merit to that. I think everybody kind of got a little little confused on the X factor, even though Jim in his books and and and Mike in his articles uh kind of didn’t didn’t create didn’t explain it in that way, but it just kind of got kind of pushed in that direction. Well, I mean, it’s so hard to that’s why I’m so big on understanding on the show because I misunderstood the thing as well when I first looked at it. I I got my feet glued to the ground and so as a result I gave up some speed and now quarters are realizing they can open the thing up. Let’s turn the X factor into the down swing because Jim mentioned to me he goes let’s say the X factor is 10 at the top on the down swing I want to try and get it to 11 12 you know where the low body just leads the unwinding. And I’ve had a lot of success, I’m sure you have, where I’ve said to golfers, hey, try and keep your back looking at the target for a little while longer in transition. You’ll be astounded how that happens. Helps swing path and the acceleration of the club. Exactly. And as we go back, as we continue on, you know, we start to look at like old school feels, you know, you know, keeping the back to the target a little bit longer, driving the legs as we would talk about in the 70s. And all of a sudden, what that would do is the legs would start. Legs would start, the upper body would lag behind, club would transition to the inside. Allah the inside move uh for Peter Costus. And and all of a sudden, we start to have that that that whipping effect of the club coming through. And you know, so what happens is is if we can get that that feeling of as the club is moving back, the lower body is moving forward, whether it’s driving the legs, whether it’s the rotary motion, or whether it’s replanting the left heel, Allah Jack Nicholas, which in my opinion was one of the greatest tips, which I do want to cover here in a second, which is one of the greatest most all-inclusive tips on uh with ground re ground force reactions. um you know, you you’re starting to increase that X factor stretch, so to speak. The up the upper body is still going back, still going back, but the lower body is going down while the upper body is going back. Kind of like that baseball pitcher. He’s starting, his lower body is moving forward long before, you know, the arm comes through. And and that’s uh that kind of whiplash effect creates a lot of speed. You know what? I’m watching you. And for the folks who should get on YouTube and watch Tom because he’s doing a beautiful simple um almost illustration of the movement. And I’m looking at this going, you know, doing this properly score is so many swings like like if someone’s listening to this and they’re huge heave with a trail shoulder and they’re coming over the top and hitting these choppy pull fade shots, you get this X factor move starting the down swing, you’re going to straighten off your golf swing very, very quickly, a million%. And that goes into, you know, like we talked about, you know, you get you get that X-actor stretch, the X-actor all of a sudden starts to become a little bit more tighter on the on the down swing and then all of a sudden that right, you know, we go back to old school field since we’re that’s kind of the topic of our thing. And think about Harvey Pennock talking about reattaching the right elbow to the right side or driving the right elbow, you know, so all of a sudden these were reactions of using the pivot correctly. uh you know Homer talks about uh in the golfing machine talks about you know the pivot controlling 90% of the golf swing and then you had you know Jimmy Ballard come out and David Led better came out and talked a lot about connection about how these things should work and how the body does a lot of the work and the arms and and the club tend to follow and and they should do the right things so to speak. Um you know there’s certainly a substantial amount of that in in instruction today and I’m amazed. Yeah, I’m amazed as you’re going here because we’re essentially kissing every one of these fields. Yeah, in one conversation just with just by opening up with the X Factor you’ve talked about um panic. It’s from the little red book. It’s over here on my desk. Um and the right or the trail elbow. Let’s use mod vernacular, right? Because where the trail elbow from the top gets down to the trail side. Now, you did talk about Jimmy Balladin connection, but I’m going to go to that next. Um so Penn’s like he called it the magic move if memory serves me. Yes. From the top is the trail elbow returns to the trail side or the right elbow gets down to the right side. Um this is it happens in every sport but so many people misunderstand this. Like they’ll hear us and go, “Okay, I get to the top. I’m going to suck my elbow into my side, then I’m stuck and I don’t hit the ball properly.” Exactly. Exactly. At least at least help us do this properly, Tom. Yeah, that’s a that’s a great point. Um, and I don’t know whom I’m getting ready to plagiarize this from. So, whomever it was, thank you very much because I I use this all the time in my instruction. I cannot remember off the off top of my head where I heard it first. But anyway, under your under your trail side and under your lead side, there’s a seam on your shirt. Yeah. Where the two uh two patterns come together. So, all of a sudden, now we want that rear elbow to dive in front of that seam. Stay on the front portion of your body. We don’t want the right elbow to suck down behind that seam of your shirt get jammed in and pinned in behind your trail hip because when that happens all of a sudden, like you said, you get stuck. You get jammed. The club goes flinging out into right field. You can hit blocks. You can hit big swinging hooks and and you can Yeah. Yeah. I’m pointing at myself. That’s why I faded. I fig I know it’s going left. I know it’s going left to right. So, we’re in good shape. But but those are the the moves that that I think when we start talking about the arms and you see a lot of this on on the internet today about how the arms are working as far as what they’re trying to do where we’re trying to get the the trail elbow and we’re trying to get it pitched in front of the of the rear hip as best we can so we can get that club in a lagging condition and all of a sudden now we can use the pivot to to un unleash that that power that centrifugal force as you will to get that club to go ahead and swing out into right field. And you know, once again, as we go back into it, when you do have the right motion transitionally, that X factor stretch coming down, hopefully the we’ll get some external rotation of the right shoulder of the rear shoulder. And that drives the right hip in front of the right the right shoulder in front of the right hip and the right elbow in front of the right hip. And all of a sudden, now we’re in we’re in the right position to go ahead and knock this knock it knock the stew out of it. I mean, I want you to hit as far as you can. Yeah. Amen. Um, okay. This this walks it it almost walks a very tight line with connection. Jimmy Ballard theory, you know, and Ballard had his time in the sun. I mean, he Curtis Strange made him look like he was a genius cuz Strange would drive the thing up a Nat’s rear end. He was that accurate. Um, but again, just like the right elbow thing, so many golfers misunderstood it. And I got and and I was one, you know, um, I’m a lead better disciple. He’s like a mentor to me. and I would get my arms so pinned to my sides. Um, I never really had the freedom. There wasn’t this like freeing up element to my golf swing. And so I’d hit the thing straight but not very far. So, so help us reconcile connection first off because, you know, next thing I see people like they’re all stuck and there’s no real freedom or athleticism to their golf swings, right? And I think that, you know, we go back to the the the head cover under the arms drill. we go by the talon across the chest and under the arms. And I think that’s where people got a little bit disconnected or misunderstood this thing because all of a sudden now we have our arms, you know, our armpits are jammed against our sides. We can only make swings up to about shoulder high and and our arms are pinned to our body and we and yes, that’s a great way to feel connection where the sternum zipper and the hands are all working in in unison together. wonderful way to hit some short little wedge shots. But yes, the arms have to lift off the body to some degree. And and I think if you had Mr. Ballard on here, I think he would tell you, yeah, they do come off a little bit to some degree, but they don’t have to be pinned down and and really glued down. And I think when when we start looking at golf, you know, like I said before, stability versus immobilization. I mean, I I think Jimmy was saying, “Hey, look, let’s keep the arms reasonably attached to the body and let’s let the body react to the arms.” I mean, just let the body drive the arms rather. But he I don’t think he was saying, “Hey, look, I don’t want to ever see your armpits, you know, wherever you’re going.” You know, and and I think that yes, there’s varying degrees of that, but the bottom line is when you have some sort of connection, some sort of integration where the the body and the and the arms and the club are all working in unison together, led empowered by whatever you want to lead, empower them with, I think you’re in you’re you have a good transition. you’re going to have a good impact position and you’re going to have a good golf swing with some power. How about you comment on this statement I’m about to make where cuz I made the mistake until I was corrected by lead better himself cuz I read the ballad book and I read the as a youngster I read the lead better stuff and I was a guy trying to hit drivers with head covers under my arms or a towel across my chest which was wrong and lead told me he goes man you’re supposed to hit balls like 50 60 yards doing this correct and that was an ex an extenduation or an elaboration of what Ben Hogan showed in his book where he just make halfway swings back and through with these elbows by your sides. Um, how about this connection like this, you know, is once you get away from like lead arm parallel and your arms start to raise, if you’re doing what you should, like you say with the X factor, those arms won’t travel on by themselves, losing disconnection. Correct. Are are you seeing where I’m going? Because so many golfers are like, well, I got to finish my swing. So, they turn and their body stops. Then the arms keep running and the next thing they’re all tangled up and they can’t get the club down. Discon. Exactly right. Exactly right. And once again the elbow will get behind the seam. The arms have a lot of runoff at the top and all of a sudden we do get a lot of disconnection. So like you said when you have that lower body that starts effectively first, it’s going to buffer and because of your natural flexibility, it’s going to stop you from from getting too far out of control with the arms. Now, mind you, if the elbow if the rear elbow gets behind that seam of the shirt and it starts to fly a little bit and all of a sudden we start to see a lot of the armpit, uh you’re going to get you’re going to get into some trouble. But like you said, if you have reasonable control of your foundation and you have reasonable control over of over your arms and club, you shouldn’t have that problem. I think if you get a lot of disconnection, a lot of runoff and a poor X factor at poor X-factor stretch, I think you’re in you’re in a lot of trouble. and and and that’s where it’s becomes more difficult to reattach the elbow to the right side. Allah Harvey Pinnick, you know, and and things like that, you know, or or and it makes the inside path of better golf Allah Peter Kostas a lot harder to to maintain. Yeah, I’ll say this too because, you know, I’m sure now people will do this. They’re like, “Well, I’m listening to Tom and to you, Mark, and it’s all bluster because I’ll show you videos of Shane Lowry, whose elbow like raises up and it’s almost horizontal going back.” If if you get that place where the elbows sort of separate um a little bit, they get farther away from each other, that trail elbow lifts, you got to have some super good hands and some really neat timing, allow to match this up consistently. Well, well, let’s let’s let’s take it while we’re we’re doing old school. Let’s talk about Freddy Couples. Yeah. you know, all of a sudden the the elbows out and away. Well, what did Freddy also possess? Unbelievable lower body action. We had a lot of lateral slide. We had a lot of rotation which drove that right elbow which got that get that right elbow back or that rear elbow uh into external rotation down in front of the rear hip and all of a sudden off he goes and he’s playing pretty well. But there’s always the great thing about golf is there’s always outliers. And if you think everybody should swing the same way, it it’s really difficult because of the physiology that we’re that we have. And and TPI has shown this and and and and Proscreen has shown this that that there are people that can move in certain ways and they can do certain things and there are people that can’t. And I guarantee you that there’s a reason why Freddy Couples and Lowry have the elbow in a different condition than say an Adam Scott or or a Tiger Woods. And and it would have to boil down to physiology. It’s not that they’re not any better any or or they’re any worse. It just means that they’re put together a little bit different. And that’s how they learn to get the club back there and they learn to work around it in in transition to to make it very effective. And that’s why there’s unique golf swings. And that’s what the wonderful thing about teaching this game for a living is that not everybody swings the same way. You’re preaching, Reverend. I’m not so sure where to go because you’ve touched on so many things there and I want to keep this going forward, but I want to camp here. Um, you talked about swinging in a barrel or, you know, the or the lateral slide. I think that’s the coolest image ever of how the the hips rotate inside of the barrel, but it also gets misunderstood. And then the lateral movement gets misunderstood too because I’ve seen a lot of golfers in an effort to come from the inside. Now we’re touching costas where instead of the hips going like laterally and almost away from the golf ball, the hips fire toward the ball. Now there’s a new name for that called early extension, right? And everyone’s like, “Well, you’re early extending.” Well, they’re trying to move laterally because it’s athletic, but they just don’t understand how the hips should move. Now, you’ve done a bunch of research, so please tell us. Yeah. So, I think that if you just let’s just boil it down into real simple thoughts. You get to the top, all of a sudden if you think about your hips are pointing into right field, they’ll bump a little bit into right field. Now, they didn’t bump a whole bunch into right field, but just a little bit into right field because if you go too far, you get into that early extension that we talked about, but there’s going to be a little bit of a a little bit of a bump, a couple inch bump, and that allows the right elbow and the rear shoulder to to drop down a little bit. Yeah. Now, once we’re in the right position, now we use the rotation of our body to drive our our rear shoulder forward. So, it’s almost that the down swing works. It’s working 1/4 down and three force out. Okay. Is as far as and that goes back to something Homer Kelly had talked about where he was talking about the rear shoulder, how it worked downward for a little bit and outward for a little bit. And I think that if you go back to, you know, pinnic and you go back to the inside move and you go back to the early extension and all the stuff that we’re talking about now, it’s just making sure that you have these motions in the correct sequence, but not, you know, like not out of control. Yes, you have too much bump into into right field, you’re going to early extend. You have too much spin, you’re going to throw the rear shoulder out and over and you’re going to have trouble. Yeah, but a little bump, a little drop, a little rotation, life is life is pretty dogone good once you get that club in the right position. And you know, I think that in in in lie of working on this, I think people have have taken this now that we’re using the ground so much, we’re into using the ground, I think they have taken, you know, th this motion, you know, let’s let’s talk about the lateral motion. Yeah. you know, all of a sudden we’ve got to have good laterals and we’ve got to have good powerful laterals. All of a sudden now that leads itself because everybody, you know, can push themselves into and drive themselves forward a lot easier than they can do a lot of other things. So I think that’s where we’ve started kind of misunderstanding that and it started to take a lot of that sequencing that we had before and it starts to make it you know all of a sudden it’s taking one aspen we’re taking six or seven you know cure that and that’s and that’s where we get too much lateral motion or we get too much rotary motion you know I want to say this I’ll make a statement I’ll just let you respond if all you have in your toolbox is a hammer everything in the world will appear like a And and I sort of see that with a lot of golfers like they’ll hear something sexy sounding maybe on a podcast like this or maybe on the internet somewhere or YouTube video and then the next thing that’s all they do. But the sculpt swing is this wonderful blend of all these cool things you’re talking about and everything, you know, must be taken um in consideration in concert with everything else and then everything is timed. You’ve used the word timing a few times. the the timing of this all is a very big deal, right? And I and I think that probably the one of the coolest technologies, you know, out there is is swing catalyst. And all of a sudden, you got swing catalyst and you’ve got uh, you know, smart to move and there’s a and gasp has their force place, but but they they show you the timing of when all of a sudden when do the hips move laterally, when do the hips start spinning, when do we use the verticals and the push-up from the ground? And and and how do we sequence those effectively? And all of a sudden now you take the force plate data, you couple it with all of a sudden the AI data from from a 3D motion analysis, whether it be gears, sports box or u or or motion to coach. And all of a sudden now we can start to put numbers and we can figure out how much you’re twisting and turning, how much how many inches you need to move forward, how much you need to rotate. And you can get you can go down all kind of paths. But the bottom line is it reiterates the fact that it’s all about moderation. and this dance routine that we have to have. You can go off on a tangent like Bryson and get as detailed as you want in today’s with today’s technology and learn this particular move. Or you can go and stand in a door frame and bump your your lead hip against the door frame to feel what laterals are. You can stand up here and pretend you’re swinging the barrel field and figure out what rotary motion is. You can replant your left heel to figure out what the feeling of driving your hip your weight down into the into the ground is. Ah, Nicholas. So, I mean, I think that it’s all there. It’s just a matter of finding somebody that can sequence these in the right direct in the right motion, create the right matchups. You hear that term all the time. We want the right matchups and so we can control our pivot motion. And if we can’t control our pivot, it’s very difficult difficult to control the arms. Now, I’m not saying that you can’t use your arms to drive your pivot sometimes, but I’m more of the teacher that kind of believes if I can get the body working correctly, the arms will repair themselves to some degree. That doesn’t mean I have to get in there. I can’t get in there and fiddle with them a little bit, but I think that it certainly is something that that that we can that will write itself to some degree. Well, in a way, if your body moves in the appropriate area in the appropriate amount, you almost guarantee that the arms can’t go beyond a certain area. So, you’re defining the area in which they can move. So, as a result, you’re improving your chances of getting the club down consistently at the ball. Yes, no question. And I think when we go back um and we look at a book that uh that MLAN wrote and he was talking about the eightstep swing, he was talking about the danger zones. I think that’s what he was calling them. danger zones. Yeah. The club, you know, is delivered in a certain position. Let’s just use belt high coming down. You know, it’s, you know, which So, all of a sudden, we’ve got the club in a certain position. Yeah. If the club head gets too far behind your hands and your body, you’re in trouble. If it gets too far out in front of you, you’re in trouble. If you, but if you’re somewhere in this little zone of of moderation, you’re going to hit it pretty decently. and and and that that’s what I think I think golf instructors nowadays have got have have moved off on a tangent because of this technology focusing in on trying to make everybody swing in ways physiologically that they might not be able to swing and not taking some moderation and and I’m not going to I’m not here to call any anybody out in that regard but we’ve all seen videos of people contorting themselves into positions that you look at and you go, “Wow, that looks really, really difficult injur without a lot of flexibility.” And I’m not saying that that can’t work. I’m just saying it’s harder. And if you teach a bunch of kids, you teach a bunch of college kids, you teach a bunch of of many tour players and professional players, they can do anything you ask them to do. But if you have Mrs. have her camp like I do on the lesson T and she’s trying to get this thing airborne. You know, I I might need to keep things pretty pretty well in that in that out of those danger zones and in that moderate zone where where she or he can find that go that the arms or the body in a position where they can return it and get the get the club back to square reason easily. Well, I’m expecting and again folks, um Tom is this beautiful he’s a bridge between old and new and we’re showing how old and new actually are very much the same. The new just has numbers and data ascribed to it of which Tom has done all the research. But I want to say this because I look at you here and you got this background where um there’s this pretty palm tree behind you. I I I’ll say quintessentially old school because I’m old enough to have been there where I’ve seen a really good golfer, I mean a major champion struggling with launching direction and a very savvy instructor took him to a place where there was a tree about 40 yards in front of him and he said, “All right, you missing shots to the right. I need you to hit 20 shots to the left of this tree. How you going to do that?” And then what the the decent or the good golfer, even the decent decent golfer in this situation, you’ll organize all the stuff we’re talking about to present the club face in a way to get the ball to launch around the left side of the tree. And if you’re having that problem around the right, right? And and that’s so brilliant. I’m so glad you brought that up. Uh in my when we built the the facility when I wor lived in Mexico, I worked in Porttoarta for five years for the Four Seasons Punamita. That must have sucked. Oh, it was. Yeah, it was really terrible. You know, perfect weather all the time and beaches and Oh, it was great. Margaritas. Um, I had them put a tree. I had a a short game area and I had them put a tree just to the right of that short game area about 60 70 yards off the uh off the tea. Mhm. So that way I could do just that drill because I’m always big. And if you’ve taken a lesson from me, you’ll hear this. Go back to being a kid again. Yeah. I’m a tree. Bend it around me. I’ll stand out in front of I’m like, go. You’re in the woods. How would you cook it around the tree? How would you cut it around the tree? You know, all of a sudden, you know, we get so bound up into into Trackman data and and and foresight data and and all this stuff about, you know, the face, the path, the, you know, the the gear effect and this and that. And while I’m the biggest techie in the world, and I absolutely love that stuff, thank God it wasn’t around when I was a kid or I would have never left the the uh the practice range. Yeah, but going back like you said and just saying, “Hey, start this ball to the left of that tree. How’d you do it?” “Well, I wiggled my left ear.” All right. Well, you’re a left ear wiggler to start the club down. Congratulations. Work on that. You know, or I feel like I’m doing X, Y, or Z. That’s that brings the feel and the old school back into it. I think what we’ve done or what we have a danger of doing with this technology is losing feel. And the bottom line is if we lose feel, we can’t play because we’re not robots. We’re not robotic. We I didn’t say you couldn’t keep your downswing path within certain ranges and and play pretty decently. But if you’re trying to get your downswing path to two degrees out or two degrees in every single time, you’re pushing a rope uphill and and you’re really working you’re really working in a way that that’s going to compromise your feel and make it very difficult for you to shape shots when you get in trouble and you’ve got to do something outside of the norm. Uh, you know, we don’t play golf in a dome and it’s a very, you know, and the wind’s going to blow and the it’s going to be wet and so we’re gonna have trees and slopes and humps and bumps. So, we got to be able to work around that. It’s amazing to me. Um, it’s fresh in my mind because this is in 2025 and I’m back from the Travelers Championship where Tommy Fleetwood um came up just shy to Keegan Bradley. And Tommy every day, even prior to a round of golf tournament round, sets up a practice or warm-up station, practice station, whatever you want to call it, with an alignment rod. And everyone stick stuck diagonally in the ground. essentially his swing plane and he practices just over the top of that to make sure the club doesn’t fall too far behind him. He does it every single day. Yeah. And it’s not like he’s trying to hit the ball. He’s just trying to feel there’s your thing and not complicate the thing to a place where he’s like, “All right, this is my sweet spot for the day. So, I’ve got something I can go and take to the course as opposed to going, well, I’m turning my body and I’m I’m ground reaction forcing like Tom said I should, but the ball’s still going everywhere.” Where Tommy’s like, “This is my zone. This is where I got to feel my my club move because he’s got something he’s practicing with 100%. And I think that goes back to M Mlan’s danger zones. He’s just trying to keep him out of that danger zone because he knows when he doesn’t play well, maybe the club gets sucked in behind him and he starts hitting flip hooks. I, you know, I don’t know Mr. Fleetwoods, but I, let’s just say he starts hitting flip hooks, you know. So all of a sudden putting that shaft out there and keeping the arms out in front, keeping in front of that seam of the shirt, so to speak, and and being able to to create a better pivot or create a better arm structure coming down helps him to not get into those danger zones and to keep his swing in a very moderate place where he’s doesn’t hit too many foul balls. I always tell people, I’m like, “Look, all we’re trying to do is not hit foul balls.” Mhm. If you are hitting a draw, then you need to make sure as a right-handed player, then you need to make sure when you look up that thing is is curving right to left. If you’re in a fade, it better be going left to right. We can’t have a two-way miss. And when we start having those two-way misses, when we start having those swings fall into those traps and getting outside those moderate zones, that’s when we start hitting foul balls. And when we hit foul balls, that’s when we can’t play. uh big miss the big miss Allah Hank haney you know uh and then you’ve got two-way misses you know everybody will preach against the two-way miss you know if I’m hearing a common denominator here a lot of it is you know the old school stuff is simple sounding and and to Fleetwood just to put a bow on that conversation when he hits he has his caddy Ian just basically puts a club underneath Tommy’s chin because it falls backwards when he hits practices above his station so he tell there’s his feels that he goes out there with um all right let’s wrap Let’s wrap with this. I’ve kept you away from your snorkeling and your diving and all these beach activities you got going on in your vacation. Thank you. Um, this is the ultimate in feel and we live in an era of ground reaction force because the golf ball’s going a ton and we’re all trying to hit it harder and so we’re using the ground, right? And I’m watching golfers bounce all over the show and they’re hitting foul balls all over the lot. But there was one very countrywise old man named Sam Sneed who when the golf swing went arai he would practice barefoot. Exactly right. I did so last night in my garage. Okay. And so when you sent this to me I’m like this is like a message from heaven for me. So please uh tell us about practicing or hitting balls barefoot. You know I think it’s all you know about awareness and sensory awareness. And when you have shoes on and socks, you have you have eliminated some of your awareness as to how you’re interacting with the ground. And the great thing about force plates nowadays is they they give us a a very uh very accurate insight as to what you are doing. But what we lose is that feel of how we’re doing it. You know, what are the toes doing? What are the what’s the ball of the foot doing? What’s the heel doing? And all of a sudden when you start to look at and and hit balls barefooted, you know, of all things and Sneeed was brilliant with this, you know, he figured out that he had to swing within his feet, so to speak. He couldn’t get out to the outside. Yeah. Outsides of his feet. He couldn’t get on up on his toes. He couldn’t get back on his heels. He had everything kind of that that that his CG, so to speak, or or his pressure center of pressure was always in the right position or trending in the right position. it wasn’t getting to the extremes. And so when you swing barefoot and you hit those easy little shots, I think you can find your feel, you can reattach your feel to something that you can look for that’s more concrete when you start adding speed. And as we all know, you know, if you start, you know, I always tell people, I’m like, look, I can’t teach you to run hurdles before you know how to walk. So, if you’re trying to create speed and you’re trying to create a lot of a lot of awareness on how to create speed, if I can slow you down and step you back and have you do that and create that that right momentum or the the right sequencing, whether it be barefooted or or in shoes, you know, in partial speed, then we can start to build that up and we can start to add some more some more some more speed to it and say have some more fun because let’s face it, I you know, everybody wants to hit it further. There’s not a person on this planet, even if they hit it 350, that doesn’t want to hit it 360. Yeah. Truth be told, though, folks, um, some of the best pitching and bunker lessons I’ve given have been with a person barefoot. Okay, speaking of barefoot, I need to get you back to a place where your toes are in the sand there behind you. So, uh, Tom, for the folks who want to know more, who want to follow you, etc., etc., please send them, tell them where they can go to get more on you. Perfect. You can find me at Tommsticknigolf on uh in let’s see Instagram I don’t let’s see Facebook Tommsticknney golf and then if you want to reach me via email it’s pretty easy it’s [email protected] I’m very easily found and very uh very open to answering all the questions and tackling all the videos that I can uh from the listeners at home but right now we’re going to let him get back to his one of his pastimes so they’re going to enjoy his time off thank you for your time your intellect just for sharing the way you did, Tom. I really appreciate it because for me it’s all about understanding and all this information that’s rampant um the understanding of it is important and you’ve really done a great job helping us to do that. Thank you so much and I’m a big fan of your podcast. I’ll continue to listen and I keep up the great work, sir. [Music] [Music]