Jeff Sullivan: Secrets of a +4 HDCP at 40 Years Young (Flashback Friday)

0:00Hey welcome back to Wicked Smart Golf, aka WickedSmart. This is your host Michael Leonard and this podcast is committed to helping you play better golf without changing your swing. This episode is supported by Hitz Driver. If you're ready to speed train while hitting golf balls, this is my favorite system. This year alone I'm up 5 miles an hour or more starting at 110 all the way up to 115. Unlike most speed trainers, this is different because you're actually hitting golf balls. The driver itself is adjustable so you follow the protocol over 16 weeks doing it twice a week and watch your game improve. I've never hit it longer and I couldn't recommend Hitz enough. If you're ready to get started, make sure you use the code WickedSmart at checkout or click the link down in the show notes. Alright golfers, hopefully you are doing well here. We got a flashback Friday from one of the most popular episodes here in the 2025 season that I wanted to replay because I know we've had so many new listeners join over the last year and this is one of my favorite episodes and one of my favorite guys to follow on Instagram and that is Jeff Sullivan.

1:02So I've linked to his Instagram down below but chances are you probably already follow him. He has a lot of great content. He is really promoting the 9-5 golfer who is very competitive. This guy grinds like very few people and that's honestly what initially attracted me to finding him on Instagram. I loved his content and once I got to know more about him and how much he is a tournament golf sicko like myself. I knew I had to have him on the podcast. So we're going to talk a lot today about strategy, practice and really what it takes to play your best even when you are 40 plus years young. That's right guys, 40 years young, not 40 years old. It's all about perspective. So today some of the topics we're going to cover is first off how he uses decade golf to really think like a pro and master course management. We're going to talk about the truth, about speed, exercise and what it takes to add more distance every single year. How to make better decisions on the course and not let emotions get the best of you. Why it's really important to schedule your practice week and not just wing it and how to practice at home so you can improve even if you don't have time to go to the golf

2:02course. So again, this is a top down load from last year. So I wanted to make sure that you guys heard it. And once again, with all of these episodes, whether it's solo, guest, game plans, always find a couple things that you can do to start playing better golf. Remember, it's not about improving your swing all the time or endlessly hitting range balls. It's about different areas of the game like putting short game, mental game routines. All of this is what it really takes to play wicked smart golf. Also, if you do want to get started with decade golf, I have talked about it a lot on the podcast created by Scott Fosette. To me, it is the number one course management system out there. Makes it wicked easy to make decisions on what you should hit off the tee, how you should hit with your approach shots, target selection, drills, some mental game stuff and more. So again, if you do want to get started with decade, make sure and use the code wicked smart at checkout or click the link down below to save 20% on your membership. Now let's get into the interview with Jeff Sullivan. Jeff, thanks so much for being here, man. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. Definitely. It's always fun to kind of connect with people on social media and just meet fellow golf

3:05sickos like yourself and understand that people loved the game and you don't have to be 20 years old to be breaking apart into doing great stuff. Obviously, very diverse audience on here, age wise and skill wise. So I just felt like bringing you on could really help people with their routines, their habits because that's really one of the most important things to me is what are the things you're doing off the course that's going to help you on the course and what are you practicing like and all that kind of will lead to playing your best under pressure. And if you get into tournaments, obviously, we'll kind of get into that too. But before going down, all the stuff you're doing now and talking about the success you've had in some of your big tournaments, how did this all start for you? Yeah, so I picked up the game when I was probably around eight or nine years old. My dad kind of picked it up a little bit later in life so he would have been 38, 39 at that point. And this would have been, again, I'm 40 now so that would have been kind of early mid 90s around the time tiger was kind of going through his US junior M and USM kind of three peets. So kind of peak of his rise. And so we picked it up. He was actually left handed. So anytime would be at the range, it would be kind of like looking at a mirror and I would

4:08just try to copy what he was doing. I was hooked from day one, played high school in college and competitively after. And just like you said, I've been hooked ever since just trying to get better every single day. You know, still playing in tournaments when I can. A lot of instance in that area, greater Cincinnati golf association, trying to play in some USU qualifiers, really just anything that I can to stay sharp. I love it, man. And you played in college as well. Yeah, played at Campbell'sville University in Kentucky right in the middle of nowhere. I think we had a golf course of Walmart and maybe Mcdonalds. So it was all we did was kind of practice and hang out, but it was a great setup and I had a lot of fun with my teammates. Okay, I love it. And I feel like now you have just like such a good schedule. That's honestly one of the first things I want to talk about because you have a full time job. Obviously you're working out, you're a fraction, you have a great Instagram on link to it down below. What is it just off the top? My head, I don't remember the handle of it too. Yeah, so it would go. Yeah, perfect. Cool. And I will link to that. So talk to us about like your week.

5:09I think that this is something, you know, I have a lot of guys on here that are like, hey, how do I schedule? You know, I want to practice. I want to work out. I want to play. What does it like a week look like for you? Maybe just a kind of paint a picture of how you're able to stay sharp and you know, even get to that plus four, you know, just because you get there doesn't mean you're going to stay there. So what is like a week look like for you? Well, I'll say first off, it's definitely not for the faint of heart. If you do have a full time job and also want to try and be at this level that, you know, a lot of us are fortunate to have made it to. So usually starts out waking up around four or four thirty in the morning, which is rough for some people, but we've been doing it for so long, mostly because of our dogs. So they kind of help me, you know, they're ready to. I get it dog. I've got to do it. But yeah, so, you know, a typical day is we wake up, feed them, go to the gym from like five to six a.m. and from there, just depending on what I need to do and kind of what's available. And that's probably the biggest thing is you need to have a stronger team, but also be flexible, just depending on, you know, if you're not a member of a country club, I never have been some kind of bouncing around from, you know, what hours this range is open.

6:11What is this place offer? Do any short game. So it's always kind of a little bit up in the air, but there's always the dedication of I'm going to practice something this morning, but flexible on what that might be. For example, if I wake up one morning, go to the gym and it's raining, like, probably don't want to go stand on the putting green for an hour. So I'll try to find something that's, you know, covered range, whatever the case might be, but usually try to do like an hour and a half of some sort of practice after the gym. And then it's back home, walk the dogs, start, start the work day. And then depending on what we have after work, you know, I'm fortunate enough to have a small putting green in my basement. So on those days where it might have been raining, I can come home and do some of that. And then a lot of time that I'm trying to spend now off the course is really thinking about mental strategy. Listening to Alex and Scott on some of your previous episodes, there's really huge value in just thinking about the game off the course versus trying to figure it out on the course because, you know, we all know how emotional that can be and how our decision-making can get clouded when we're standing over a shot versus, you know, sitting at your desk,

7:15looking at a golf course thinking about how you should play it. So it's really again, you know, I try to have a very disciplined routine, but be flexible within that routine. I like it. It sounds like planning ahead. Is that how do you like kind of map out your week on Sunday or what does that look like? Um, actually, so I'll map out definitely like gym days because I want to make sure that I'm basically trying to prepare myself sort of like I'm a PGA tour player. Of course, I'm not. But if I know I have a tournament on Saturday and Sunday, I'm not going to go, you know, blast my legs in the gym on Friday. That doesn't make sense to do so. I'd say the gym is probably the most structured when it comes to what I'm doing. Am I going heavy on a certain day is one day just more mobility cardio sort of stuff. But outside of that, I try to just pay attention to like looking at my decades stats, what I'm just kind of feeling in my swing and kind of what I need to work on. I'll definitely kind of plan and prepare when I'm going to be at the golf course, which days, but flexible on what I'm going to work on on this day. Okay. Perfect. Yeah.

8:15That's actually a good point there is that one, you got to plan your week. You got to have some sort of like, yeah, I'm going to work out these days. I'm going to structure it. Like you say, you don't want to be like super sore. I, you know, been doing this podcast for years and what did I do a couple of weeks ago? I had a huge workout and then I felt terrible. Next time, what are you doing, Mike? I was just some days, you know, you just got to got to figure it out a little bit better. So I'm glad you reminded me that. So I think that the planning is key. And then it's like you said, planning your practice sessions because that's, you know, that's one of the things where that's one of the reasons I started this brand is because like, you see guys just go to the range and they're just doing nothing. They're just doing the same thing. They're there. They want a practice. But then like, they'll just start hitting mid-iron, you're a driver. There's no warm up. There's no structure and it's, it's terrifying to me. It's how you're going to get injured and just waste time and money. Like, I don't know where you're at, range wise, practice wise, but like a bucket here is like $20 sometimes. Oh, yeah. This is wild. So it's like, I can imagine. So it's basically, it's like, you don't want to waste $20 on a bucket and not feel, and actually feel like you got worse, which kind of happened. So you talked about tracking your stats. I'll get more into course management in a decade later because I absolutely love decade,

9:17obviously as well. But like when you look at your stats, like, in say, okay, I'm going to go on my dashboard, like, how do you then kind of practice based on that? Or what does like your, your practice routines look like? Maybe take us through a couple of different ones if you don't mind just to kind of give people like, Hey, man, I never really thought about that or I never really understood how to analyze my stats. Yeah. So I think it's, you know, it's one thing to look at your stats and say, like, you know, maybe maybe it says, I'm bad. It's six to eight feet putting right now, which is currently where I'm at, which is why that jumps to my mind. But what you have to think about is like, is that, is that truly where you're underperforming or is it a result of not hitting it closer from 25 to 50 yards? So it's kind of getting that whole picture and trying to analyze what does that actually mean. And so for me, that's actually the case right now. Getting at my stats on my proximity is actually worse from 25 to 75 than it is from like 75 all the way up to 150. Interesting. Only on a sample size from five rounds right now, but it's still kind of eye opening to know that I'm just not very good from, you know, again, based on we're talking about

10:20kind of PGA to our averages is my kind of baseline comparison. So in the grand scheme of things, it's not bad, but I still need to improve. And so from there, when I go to the range, my kind of non negotiables are, I have a kind of a band that I use to stretch and warm up with regardless of if I'm hitting it 50 yards or trying to rip drivers hard as I can. Just because like you said, I want to, I want to get loose. I want to make sure I'm not hurting myself, especially at 40. I didn't have to do that at 20. And then I have a speed training tool that I also warm up with regardless of if I'm actually going to do speed training. It has a nice ball and chain sort of thing that I definitely get made fun of sometimes when I'm at the course, but that's okay. The people that are making fun of you aren't as good as you. Yeah, they tend to get a little bit more quiet once the first few holes go by and see 100%. 100%. But yeah, anyways, I always do that. And you probably see from my post, I always have sticks down. I'm just constantly trying to line up better because it's something that almost nobody does correctly 100% of the time. And so those are things that I'm always doing. And then from there, what I'm going to be working on coming up is.

11:21Do you go into it and say like, hey, I'm going to spend 30 minutes here. An hour here, did you have that even mapped out or like, how do you, you know, some players are like divide their balls by thirds and say it's first third technical, second third, you know, maybe more skills and third one more competitive. You do anything like that. I don't break it down by ball. But one thing I do, a couple of other kind of non negotiables for me is I never dump the balls on the grass. I always keep them in the bucket. And I do that because I always want to go through my routine as much as I can before I hit a ball. I don't want to just like rate hit, rate hit, nothing. I love that idea to get into. And so I'll kind of like scoop it out. I might bounce it into the right spot, but I'm always walking behind, you know, checking my alignment. And once I feel like that's in check, then I'll kind of move up through the bag. If that's the goal for the day, sometimes I might go hit 100 wedges and not touch another club and just to focus for that days. Let's say you do that wedges only kind of practice. As you said, that was an area to improve in the stats. What does that look like? Yeah. So I think right now what I'm working on is, you know, if I can get into the kind of

12:22track man sort of facility, that's a lot easier to, you know, see exact numbers on, you know, if I take it back to sort of using kind of like the clock system eight, nine clock, how far is that going? Playing around with different tempos and speeds. But when you're on the range, you kind of have to just laser whatever target is out there and give it your best shot. But it's really right now. I'm trying to dial in some different length swings, keeping the tempo essentially the same. But length is obviously easier to control than speed, at least in my opinion. So I'm trying to perform those different distances. And then with that, you know, make that same swing open the face a little bit, how far does that go? So just trying to build sort of a matrix that I've never really had. I've always been kind of a field player with wedges, but have lost that a little bit over the years as I did a bunch of speed training for about 18 months that worked. And so now my game is a little bit different than it used to be. So I'm kind of adapting to that, which is a great problem. But still problematic in some ways. Yeah, no, that's cool. I can't wait to talk about speed training too, because I'm going to really go hard here

13:23in the off season on that myself after getting humbled lately by 18, 19 year olds. So we talked about wedges, talked about some non-negotiables. I think if players automatically just did that, they'd probably already improve. What is like a irons and what driver do you do anything specific? Do you have any drills you like to do? Like what does those range sessions look like? Not really. So as far as drills, I think again, it's mostly just alignment. I think for me, the big problem I have, my kind of my whole career is being flippy. So I'm always trying to get my path to be a little bit more out to in. And so most of the time I'm just working on simple takeaway stuff, because the golf swing is so short that it's in my opinion really hard to manipulate like, is my wrist here at the top? Is it here? It's kind of probably going to come back to the same area down at the bottom. But if I can start it back on the right, the kind of the right plane and the right face angle, good things are probably going to happen in the rest of the swing. I like it. And you said routine two, so did you do your full routine? Are you just talking about kind of going behind and then like the walking in or sometimes you do your full just like break it up?

14:24Yeah, as I get closer to the tournaments, I'll definitely do full routine. But when I'm just at kind of a normal range session, I'll definitely walk behind and just make sure I'm kind of like walking into it. But full routine is kind of like, you know, I always picture like Jason Day with kind of the club in front of him, one eye, making sure that you're aligned, then you walk in and kind of just make sure the big thing for me. And I think probably 90% of amateurs is that we set our club down, but then he kind of shuffle and like aim a little bit farther right for right handed players. And so I'm really trying to feel like my feet are like 60, 70 yards left when in reality, they're probably. Yeah. So I think that's, I mean, honestly, that's so much of my practice. And I think that's why, you know, my goal of social media was never to like gain a bunch of followers and get a bunch of attention. I just go post what I post because it's what I do. And I think it can help people. And so it's probably boring to watch in a lot of ways, but that's to me, that's what good golf requires is just a whole bunch of boring repetition of the same things over and over to really dial man. I love it, man.

15:24That's one of my most viral image posts on Instagram every month that I reposted is seven boring golf tips or how to go golf. And it because it's like people are like, like you said, they always are looking for the flashy new thing is, you know, and don't get me wrong, like training aids and stuff like that. And I'm looking for, you know, the overnight thing that's going to like cure everything. And that's why I started the whole brand because I was like, God, everybody's on YouTube just trying to figure out how to shallow the club. And I'm like, I never shallow or go on a plus Andy gap, right? Like it's not that big of a deal. So it's cool that you have just talked about the fundamentals. Like you, I can't stress them enough here. So I love bringing people like you on that are living the values. You're doing the same thing. If someone watched you, but if someone watched you though, they would instantly be like, man, I need to slow down. Wow, I need to look at my alignment, you know, because that's everybody's always watching. And that's, and that's why I said you can't worry about the opinion of others. You like your training aid, whatever it is. And people might give you a shit about it. Well, you know what, you're a plus four. So it doesn't matter. But I'm just glad you're talking about fundamentals, just the repeatable, easy things.

16:26And not once did you talk about like all the swing changes you're trying to make. It sounds like you're just, you know, you're swing at this point. You probably have a few fixes. Like you said, alignment, takeaway, you kind of have your two things. And then you just try to kind of bounce back from there. Sounds like. Yeah, for sure. Like, you know, alignment set up. So for me, you know, along with, I think along with him, because of the bad alignment, my face tended to get shut a little bit, just because I have to get it back online somehow. So aligning correctly and opening the face just a little bit for me is what allows me to just kind of fully release it. And I know that I'm probably not going to hit it left. Of course, sometimes that's going to happen. But that's kind of my good feels when I know I'm playing well and hitting it well when all those things are happening. That's actually interesting to talk about feels too, because I just wrapped up my 11 day golf bender and I was like talking with my high school coach came out and watched me a couple of days and he's like, man, I just love playing with you because in between shots, we talk like you're not, you know, trying to be super technical. He's like, what are you like working on? And I was like, I don't, I don't have like a bunch of stuff I'm trying to work on. Like it's just, unless it's like if something's really, really wrong.

17:26So do you have any like swing thoughts or set up thoughts you go to? I know you kind of mentioned the feet, but is there anything else? Or do you just really try to keep it as like routine target minimal as possible with that? The two big things for me is I really try to stay tall on my backswing because I had a, I had a bad tendency as kind of a previously like smaller athlete growing up as I would really try to like go down and like jump to gain distance. And I've been able to add some muscle and strength that is don't need to do that anymore. So I try to really stay tall because it's just makes low point more predictable low point and then from there, you were dipping down. Yeah. And so when you do that, obviously there's two, you can come up and you know, I'm been get lucky and hit it straight. Yeah. Or you jump too much and thin it or you dump the club and you know, you have to distance your trying to hit. I've hit like half my shots thin in my life and they're better than fat. But yeah, it's definitely, it's frustrating sometimes. And yeah, that's actually a good, good perspective. And hopefully people can again just remember that it's not always about technical swing

18:26changes. So talk about speed training a little bit too. Because you mentioned distance at our advanced stage here, you know, trying to compete with these young kids. We got to hit it a long ways. Were you at now? Like would you say for, you know, club at speed and like average distance and then kind of will go into the speed training? Yeah, it's a little bit blur it. I would say club at speed is probably like in the high teens, which isn't, isn't like super fast compared to, you know, the longest people in the world. But for somebody, the PJ tour and average, those like 115, 116. So you're pretty much right there. There was a point where I got it up to like 123, 124, but that was with a very light driver head and something I really like. So with my irons, you can see and my driver, they're all very heavy. So I think my iron swing rate right now is like D8. I have a ton of lead tape on there, but that's just because I really like to feel the club head and where it's at. So the same with my driver. And so I think because of it being heavier, the swing speed is a little bit slower, but because there's so much mass behind the ball, I'm still getting out there. As far as I want to. Okay. That's that's crazy, man.

19:27What high one teens and get to 120, man, that's, I mean, I'll get there like with it, like a really aggressive speed training session, but I'm not taking that to the course. So what does speed training look like for you? Everybody has different programs, apps, stuff like that. Yeah. So I mean, kind of like we, I think we talked about a little bit on Instagram today. It's just staying generally fit, just making sure I think injury prevention is probably the most important thing. You can't just go from sitting on your couch to trying to swing out of your shoes. You're going to get hurt. I use a system called mock three speed training. It's not as well known as some of the other like stack and super speed, but they're definitely some, I would say unorthodox looking tools, but they certainly work. And so one of them is kind of a really heavy, it almost looks like it was built at like Home Depot, which is some random materials, but it's kind of a heavy tool that just helps you build strength in the, in the right movement patterns. And then the others, there's two others. So there's one that's called a jet stick. That's the one that has kind of like the ball and chain. I can try to send you some images and stuff too. If you're curious, that's the one that we try to swing kind of as hard as we can.

20:30But their whole philosophy is speed out front. So making sure that you're, you know, listening for sounds and things like out in front of the ball and not trying to like, yeah, yeah, from the top, you know, we all know that you're, you're all the timing, right? Like you can only accelerate once. Exactly. And so, you know, when you feel like the speed is passed, well, you've really probably already kind of slowed down. So the maximum speed has already kind of happened around the ball. There's another one that's almost like a, you know, when you see runners running with like a, you know, kind of a wind thing on their back. It's the same, same concept. So there's a kind of a golf shaft with a grip in these bands that sort of that same purpose and it really helps with like iron and wedge impact. So those are the three tools I use. When I was doing that really kind of intensively, I would do those, probably like two or three times a week. So there's like four or five different drills with all three tools, which it turns out to be a really tough workout in and of itself. Okay. So yeah, I just want to say you said two to three times a week. I think that's important for people to know that, you know, our defense about speed training is not going to take an hour every day.

21:32You shouldn't do it every day. So always want to throw that out there because people, people, I think psych themselves out and like, oh, I'm too old. I'm to this. I've had guys that start with rib stick and they add like 30, 40 yards over six, eight, 10 weeks. And it's like, you got to, and they're in their 50s sometimes. So it's like, you just got to start and it's not going to take a ton of time. So two to three times a week. And then, but it sounds like this one's like a pretty aggressive kind of workout almost. Yeah. And I, I probably make it more so than I should, but that's just kind of my personality. I get it. And the hard thing is with speed training, you want to be careful to not swing so much and work yourself so hard that you slow down because then you're kind of training the wrong, like mind muscle connection. Because when you start to swing slower, your body's going to get used to that too. So I must kind of have to like start a set of one of those. And you know, get out of the set before you start to feel that fatigue. Because ultimately what we're trying to do is get ourselves comfortable with swinging faster. Mm hmm. Do you do the, so you do like a workout first or is this just the workout for the day? Like I always like to know how people kind of, you know, is it, do you do any activation or mobility or do you do this before or after the gym or non gym days?

22:36Yeah. So I think I can't remember the gentleman's name that you had on, but he had the Scottie's coach that was talking about actually. Yeah. So I definitely kind of like I was talking about the range with the band and kind of the swing tool itself. I always use that to warm up. So on speed training days, I'll do kind of that general warm up. I have some other stretches I learned from my kind of intensive crossfit days. So there is a period of like four or five years, why kind of stepped away from tournament golf and really got into, into crossfit. And that's helped me kind of build my workouts going forward, but back to speed training. I definitely do kind of a general warm up, go through the speed training session. And then if I am going to do any other like lifting and things, I'll do that afterwards. And because again, back to my point about not being tired and trying to do that speed training, it's almost counterintuitive. If you do it when you're already fatigued and can't put them into it, do you have like different times a year that you try and speed training to do it your own? Definitely. Winter is the kind of the peak just because we're not outside playing. So that two or three times a week, I would say is pretty aggressive.

23:36If you do it right and put the full effort into it, it's easy. And I try to do it maybe just once a week to maintain what I've built in the winter. And then I'll kind of rinse and repeat, you know, you're on here at this point, as long as I don't lose anything, I'll be happy if I can get you more, you know, over the next couple of years. And that's great too. Do you ever have those days where you've had a few guests talk about it? I've done it a few, I've done it pretty regularly, not so much this year, but just where you go out to the range and once you're warmed up, just trying to swing as hard as you can. Absolutely. And I think that it's, it's critical and it's, it's hard to do a few. If you're somebody who has never speed trained or maybe you grew up at a course where it's like, you know, very kind of wooded country club. And it's more about target golf. It's hard to break that, that mental kind of barrier of like just letting it rip and not being afraid of where it goes. Because, you know, I'll admit, I was kind of a little bit worried when I started speed training and I was going to get really crooked and started and all over the place. But I think the opposite is actually true based on a lot of studies that I've heard. Yeah, I've actually seen the same thing and loose tagger. I just replayed his episode a couple of weeks ago and he was even talking about that.

24:37And the, all the data he found that people actually got straighter a lot of times. It's just because their sequencing got better and, yeah, people tend to think that if you're going to add distance, you're going to get like all over the golf course, but that's not typically the case. I mean, it can happen. But I think that, I think that most people to me would benefit so much from it. Like, you know, especially if you're in your 40s, 50s, like there's so many players. I mean, even in your 20s, 30s, I wish I would have done this. But I feel like you have to almost kind of get rid of the, the beliefs about it as well. 100%. And you might not get straighter, but you're definitely almost not going to get worse. You know, it's not going to get like like the guys a decade talk about, right? It's not about hitting it straight. It's about hitting your hard, not in the hazard. Yeah. If it's not in the hazard and you have a shout out to Green, like you can honestly just hit it anywhere. And you're going to be fine. And I, I was fortunate. I mean, I say fortunate, but I put in a lot of work to get there. But it was funny when I moved back to Cincinnati and started playing with guys who remember what I kind of refer to as my old game. They're like, what would you do? Like, I'm like, I mean, it's probably. It good like 30 yards farther than I'm hitting it compared to what I used to.

25:40So it's, it's a big change. It's nice to have that. That's why you got to have that wedge matrix dialed in, right? Exactly. Right. I love it. I got out of the last part of practice just before moving on is you talked about you have a cool putting green in your, in your basement. Did you build that? I've never seen that one. I did. I'm definitely not a carpenter by any means. But I was like, man, you're my hero. Did I see if you set me to home depot with all the money to do this? I don't think it's going to turn out very well. Well, so the company is actually called Camry Golf Greens like the Camry the car. And I, they have a plan. I wouldn't have been able to do this without them. So they actually have it like written out step by step. I was just like left my own devices. It would have been a disaster. OK. But it's interesting. Yeah, I bought the turf from them. They had the plan. They sell the cups. So I was like, let's just do it because I actually had a little bit of a shoulder injury this past winter. It was nothing major. No surgery. I just couldn't swing for a while. I was like, I'll just build this and I'll just start putting down here. It's like, it's 15 feet long, four feet wide. So I can definitely do a lot of different things on it.

26:41I showed up some shimmies under one side to create some break and it's definitely helped out a lot. That's cool, man. Yeah. So it's, I didn't realize it's like a kind of a do it yourself type of kit. It's not like you just tried to go on YouTube university and figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely had some help with instructions because it would, like I said, it would have been a disaster if I tried to just do it, you know, kind of freehand. Right. No, I was going to say I'm the least handy human in the world. So I understand it. I hope people are also just understanding like you're, you're at this man. You're at the range. You're working a wedge matrix. You got an ad home stuff. You're working out like you're, you're doing all the stuff, you know, and I just, I hope people are inspired by it because you, everybody has a job. Everybody has a business. Everybody has family. It's like you, you have free time, but what are you doing with it? You know, and don't get it wrong. I love a good Netflix binge, but I mean at the same time. It's like if you really want to get good at golf, you really want to get to that scratch or plus handicap or play in tournaments, you got to find the time for it. And it seems like you, like we talked about earlier, have a good schedule for it and you have all the, the right stuff kind of set up, you know, which courses are open this time, you know, what,

27:42you know, what you can do stuff at home. I just think that hopefully people are kind of understanding you can do a lot even if you're not, you know, at a country club or, you know, have a full time job and everything like that. Yeah, 100%. And I mean, the, the huge factor of this that we haven't talked about yet is my wife because without her helping with, you know, the dogs and taking care of the house and just understanding my, my obsession with this game, you know, that's, that's a huge piece of it. So obviously big shout out to her for a lot of it could be a nut job about all this. Yeah, like I always tell my girlfriend, I'm like, you know, there's a lot worse things we could be dictated to, right? And this is definitely a healthy habit. And if it ends up you working out more and doing all this stuff and, you know, I think guys to need some sort of purpose and tournament golf to me is a great outlet. You know, that's what I talk about. And the third one is like, I don't care if you're a 15 handy cap at 50 years old, you know, you could still play tournaments. You just got to find the right ones and the right flights and stuff. But it gives you something to kind of practice towards and gives you, I think that desire to just be like, I'm not going to go eat a drone can just play golf. Like, no, nothing wrong with that. But, you know, if you're doing that all the time, it's probably not the best habit.

28:44Yeah. And again, like golf is a sport where, you know, even the best in the world, you're not going to win, you know, you're pretty much almost never going to win. Like you're going to win maybe 25% of the time if you're a tiger. Yeah. Yeah. And again, like it's the enjoyment for me and I made a couple posts about this recently, like before the mid-A and like the morning of, it's just like you walk to the course, you walk up on that first tee and just like being in that atmosphere is what I love so much. Like as long as I feel like I have some sort of chance to compete, like that's what keeps me going. If you win or lose a week, I'm on the year later, people don't care. And they're not going to remember. But it's just that feeling of being able to compete, you know, under the gun, can you pull the shot off? Are you going to make the putt and just handling it the right way? It's probably the thing I've learned the most because I was one of the worst head cases you could ever run into in high school and shortly after, but luckily I've been able to turn that around. It sounds like we had a lot in common there. Yeah. Talk to us about some tournaments, Van. You had what's the tournament you've won nine times, almost at eight, nine times.

29:44Yeah. So it's our Fairfield City Championship. We call it a city championship, but it's really kind of like a sort of a club championship for a public course. So I've been playing in it since 2003 when I graduated or read before I graduated high school. I think I've only missed three tournaments since then. So I've played in it for the past basically 20 years straight. And it's just one of the ones that's always been special to me because it's where a lot of people I looked up to in high school. I mean, I was a little bit more shortly after like they were the ones winning and that's kind of what I aspired to be like, man, I can't believe this guys won this two or three times and looking back like, I'm hoping that I'm like inspiring some of the younger kids to be that same person that they look up to. It's really the first thing that I won that I felt like really meant something to me. So it's always just had a special place. And then on top of that, it used to just be like a big kind of like community event where people would hang out after this day around there be a big cookout those types of things. So it's just always been a really cool event that's that's kind of holds a special place for me. I love it. That's that's so similar to that tournament.

30:44I was telling you about for a hit record that that I just got back from. It's just fun to kind of have the the one you get to have every year, you know, like our Arizona golf schedule changes courses and tournaments like every year. But when I go home to Oregon, I know it's going to be the same weekend every year. It's like always just kind of a fun fun time and it gives you something to look forward to circle on the calendar. So talk about tournament golf though. I mean, there's a lot of players that you know, haven't haven't gotten into Wicked's Margolf 3 yet, haven't maybe entered their club championship their tournaments. What are you know, kind of your take you you painted a really good picture of just having the opportunity. But you know, what's your kind of take on tournament golf and why should players even give it a shot. Yeah, I mean, it's I think it's you know, casual golf with your friends is great. And it's a lot of fun, especially for those guys who like to go out and play like sort of right or cut buddies trips and those types of things. But it's you know, if you really care about being better at the game, there's no better test in tournament golf and just being out there again under the gun. It's it's a much different beast when you have to put every two and three footer versus your buddies. Oh, that's good. Those those start to feel like four or five six footers.

31:46And you know, when you have you know, you have to turn a score card in, you know, it's it's all official. There's just different feels like obviously mentally, but you know, it can change people physically as well. Like your hands get a little shaky your legs might get a little bit weak in some certain situations. And it's just a really cool test to go through that. So I played a lot of team sports growing up and you get those same sort of sort of feelings. And it's just great to be able to keep doing that until I'm you know, hopefully 70, 80 years old. I love it. Yeah, there was a there's a super senior flight in the tournament. I was just in and I think the oldest guy and there was 83 still out there just grinding. I loved it. So yeah, what does it got around here? I think he's 77. I think he shot his age like 50 times this year already. That's amazing. Yeah. That is so cool that when I was a member at a Mace Country Club. There's this guy. He was 95 and he would still work out and he'd hit range. He'd work out every day at the little gym there and he would hit range twice a week. And I'm like, this guy is just my hero. Like everything to that point.

32:46What are some first time tournament tips? Let's say someone's getting into tournaments or first club championship. Maybe they're getting into a state event. And I always say you kind of got to build up to the bigger ones. But let's say you're getting into one of those lower tier. Hey, I have to sign my score card. What would you kind of advise amateurs that are getting started? Yeah, I mean, number one. I think you have to I mean, assuming you know the course. I think you just have to try as much as you can to treat it like any normal round knowing that it's not. But at the same time, kind of like you and I talked about I can't remember if it was before we started recording or not. You kind of have to just embrace it like I know this is going to be hard. I know it's going to be uncomfortable, but let's go see what I can do. And you can't worry too much about like what's the result going to be am I going to win or not. Especially if it's one of your first one. Just go see what it's about. And I think it'll even if it doesn't go the way that you won as long as you kind of handle yourself well on the course. It's going to make you want to come back. It'll show you exactly what you need to work on and get better sort of expose some things, but it also expose some of the things that you're good at. Maybe maybe you don't get that nervous. Maybe you're maybe it's kind of like your superpower.

33:51I think one of your last guests said he was better in tournaments than he was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very opposite. But you just never know and I think it's just something if you love the game, you have to try at least a couple of times. Hold on one second. We're dog watching and this dog is freaking out right now. Bye. What's up, buddy? Buddy found our feral cat that lives outside and is not happy with Brenda out there. So, yeah, I'm talking to the same. Yeah, just always skeptical. There you go, bud. You can join the podcast now. Yeah, perfect. All right. So I'll just record here or restart where you just have tournaments. Oh, yeah. So when you talk about tournaments and like you said, there is kind of the aspect of like having the right attitude.

34:55You're going out there and you're appreciating it kind of owning the moment. You talked a little bit too about like doing a little bit more routine work, a little less technical stuff before the event. You said you were a head case and now it doesn't sound like you are because you've obviously won some great tournaments. And you know, I think you were right there with the USG and mid-AM. So what are maybe a couple of mental things that have helped you out. Yeah, so I think you know, a big part of it is just preparation. So I think where people can get in trouble and myself included in the past was you show up to the course. Like maybe you've looked at it like on a GPS app or something that haven't really put much thought into like how you're going to play each shot or you told. So going into that mid-AM qualifier, I knew exactly what I wanted to hit off of every T box. And with that said, I think there still needs to be a little bit of flexibility for you know, when changes if there's weather. You know, if I if I hit driver my first couple of times and it goes 60 yards offline, like I might table that for the rest of the day. But I think you have to go into it with a plan because that just settles your nerves like get to the T box like hey, caddy.

35:55This is the club I want like no no indecision. I'm an then routine itself again, just what what helps me is because I know that I've done all that practice on the range like behind the ball lineup. I have my fundamentals and you just try to treat every shot exactly the same. And just kind of try to keep that mental clarity of this is just a golf shot. Like if I hit it, I'm going to hit bad shots. It's not of if it's win. And you just have to be prepared for that. I like it. Yeah, the routine is so huge. I'm going to talk about it. I'm probably probably on my tombstone to be honest with at this point. I really do like I just want everyone to lean on that because it's so easy to worry about results when you're out there. And I feel like you can just focus on your process. They can definitely make things easier. Any other pressure, you know, if you're coming down the stretch or if you know you're close anything else you like to think about or you, you know, focus on breathing or you know anything else you might have learned over the years. When you said breathing, it's actually I was going to bring up. I wasn't I wasn't always good at that, but I found myself just kind of instinctively. It wasn't really a conscious thing that I had wanted to put in the place, but there was an event.

36:58I had a kind of a bad for grounds. I was sort of out of contention, but I wanted to, you know, do the right thing and put my best effort in and try to have a good second round. So I found myself just taking a lot of really deep breaths. Kind of after I would line myself up, but before I walked into the ball just to try and, you know, settle the nerves, make sure your breathing is calm down and really try and get tension out of your arms and hands. That's usually where it kind of manifests for me. I start to clip to club a little bit more and get a little bit guidey when I'm nervous and that a lot of bad stuff can happen when that's going on. Yeah, I think breathing is an underutilized tool and golfing in and life and, uh, yeah, one you just have to be aware of it, right? It's like most people don't even have any awareness of it. And I've had a few breathing experts on the show and you realize how shallow you breathe or how it's might be chest breathing versus diaphragm. And if you can just become aware of it and start to master that, I think that can help a ton. Yeah, absolutely. You also talked a little bit about kind of preparing for the course and I want to get into kind of decade. I know your decade golf certified. Obviously, I'm just a huge proponent of decades. So talk to us about, you know, I think you said you started 2018, which is wow, it's been seven years now, kind of living the values over there.

38:06But what, you know, what has decade done for you? Yeah, again, it's, I think it's just removed a lot of indecision, you know, we were talking a little bit earlier about like what did we do before decade? Like how did we pick targets? Maybe we didn't, you're just kind of like, you know, I feel like in the past, what I did a lot is like I want to hit it in this area or the side of the fairway, but there's never really truly like a tree limb or something that I was aiming at. Even further than that, like if I missed this 35 yards off offline on either side, like what is what is over there? So it just gives you a very disciplined and structured way to pick targets so that it removes a lot of that indecision and uncertainty. So, you know, you get up to a t shot, you have kind of your decision tree that you go through, approach us. We have our baselines and modifiers. And then just know there's really no way to kind of get that wrong if you just go through the steps. Yeah, do you, do you find that a lot of players maybe you even still have it sometimes to have like sticking to the discipline? Maybe you're, you know, not playing as good as you like to ever find yourself one day, a little bit more closer to the flag.

39:07Or do you feel like that's something now where it's just been so processed in your mind that you know, hey, I might pull it or push it towards the flag even though I'm not aiming at it directly. Yeah, so I think I think the subconscious part is where it gets people, especially me, and you know, Scott now I said talked about this a lot as well. So it's like you have your, your baseline and you've gone through your modifiers, you know what club you're going to hit, but then when you stand and over it, you're looking like, I'd be okay if I push it towards this flag a little bit or pull it over here. And it's like, you know, with, with better players, it is harder to control that because we know or at least we feel like we have the capability to do that. And the reality is probably we don't. But yeah, I think that's where it is. And it's, it's really hard like one of the things that stuck with me from a coach I had when I was younger is he told me that. Or he asked me the question like, how long do you think you're actually swinging a club and around the golf? And I think the answer was like four minutes or something like that. So it's what are you doing with the other four and a half hours where you're not swinging to make that successful. And that's something I've tried to hang on and decade just makes it easier to.

40:09To control that time in between. Yeah, that's a good point. It is funny how little we, I was playing five, five and half hour rounds. And I'm like, we hit like you said 10 minutes total of that time. It's like walking and waiting and doing all that. So it just, for me, decade, like you said, just simplifies the game. And then you can measure it two afterwards. Like, hey, I didn't, you know, stick to my, I didn't pick a target on this all right. I was too aggressive and it just kind of gives you a lot more, I think, to, to kind of measure, detract all your stats in in decade after every round. I do. Yeah. So 2018 I had, I got up to probably like 30 or 40 rounds. I had a really good kind of subset and data set for that. And I hadn't, hadn't been an active user until recently. So when I got my certification, you know, I started tracking myself obviously because I want to be able to tell stories to players. And I'm going to work with about my own experience. And so yeah, I mean, it's, it's really invaluable. What you can get from those stats, it does take a little bit of skill to analyze those and figure out just because it says you're bad at putting from a certain distance doesn't necessarily mean that's the problem. So those types of things, among others is what I'm hoping I can, and help some people with as I learn a little bit more myself.

41:17I love it. Yeah, it's very true. You got to have enough data in the set too. And then sometimes, you know, I think the stats, I don't want to say the stats can lie, but sometimes you know instinctively like, oh, God, I really got to work on this area of my game. And sometimes we can avoid it. But it sounds like you have a good understanding of, you know, logging enough. And then like you said, reviewing them, the problem is I have a lot of, you know, mental golf coaching students and the log their steps and they never look at them. And it is to like to be completely honest and fair like anybody who's thinking about using decade, it does like just like being good at ballstruck and it takes a lot of dedication and discipline to log those stats like in order to get the the output that you want. It's, you know, good data and good data out the same philosophy. So you have to be willing to track all that, but it's certainly more than worth what you get out of it when you put that time in love it. I love it. Any what's your favorite lesson you've learned from decade. Would you say that you still use Riveron could be t-shirts. I think it's, I really think it's approach shots. I've always been a really relatively good driver of the ball. I think I have to be a little bit more conscious of where I'm aiming off the tee because I have gotten a little bit longer. So more things are coming into play, which is a great problem to have.

42:25But again, with approach shots, I've definitely tended to be a little bit more on the aggressive side, mostly because I typically play shorter courses where I play just around my hometown. And so that just tends to leave you more wedges. You're like, oh, it's not going to be fine. I'll just aim right at this flag, but it really is surprising how close you still hit so many shots even when you're not aiming at the flag. And you know, Scott and Alex have so many examples that they've talked about with that. Hopefully I have someone to talk about as well. Yeah, the accidental birdies are the best. Yeah, I think I'm a breeze and what I really loved two things that Alex said were fractional bogies and then the student he had where I think he went through like an entire LPGA Q school day where they didn't aim at a single flag. So I'm actually hoping to try that out myself kind of in my next practice round or even tournament round, like you can't hurt. Yeah, now 100% man, I really he's even said even if it's like a time where you know, the modifier and everything or the baseline tells you to aim at the flag to still aim a little bit right or left just so you're never in the habit of it.

43:28Yeah, and I think I had. I can't remember who it was. I've had so many guests, but one of them was talking about make sure to not aim at the flag all the time at the range, too, because then you're kind of programming yourself and then you're not doing it on the course. Yeah, exactly and again, that's you know another thing they preach is what I try to do is I'm not trying to change shot shape ever unless I'm like forced to from a recovery situation or there's a overhanging limb off of a tee box or something along those lines, but even then in most cases you can just aim farther the other direction and avoid it without changing the shape. It sounds super boring and for people they grew up in the tiger era like us, you know hearing him talk about the nine box drill and it's just it just doesn't work for people who don't have a little bit of practice. I know I like doing the night shot just to be like gain club face awareness and like just kind of help help sometimes straight out of shot or something if I'm really like overhoking it, but yeah, for the most part man, I'm like you said I 99% of time hit my draw and if unless we really need something I don't even barely remember how to hit a fade sometimes. Yeah, exactly. It feels like you're just yanking it over it's just like kind of straighting out.

44:36Before getting into the last question, you know what's kind of the future look like for you? I know you're getting into the decade coaching and obviously helping players, but yeah, anything that you'd like to share? Yeah, so I mean, I'm should be launching my website is going to be super small just going to have some kind of basic offering is going to be jsolven golf.com and so really taking my decade certification and trying to you know for what other free time I have outside of practice in my whole time job. I want to be able to try and help people with the same things that I've learned. We all know golf is a very expensive expensive sport, so trying to supplement and kind of help myself with some tournaments and practice costs while being able to help others play some better golf. So excited about that you never know what it will turn into might flop and might you know might kind of go big and blow up, but it's just something I love and I'm passionate about. So I just want to help as many people as I can. Based on your work ethic on the golf course and off the golf course, I'm confident it'll be a success. You've got to stay consistent with it and like I said, you're a great player and you understand the values that can help people and you have real world experience.

45:38So I mean, I'll definitely linked everything down in the show notes there. And for my last question, what would you say is your best tip to help someone become a plus handicap? That's a good question. Let me think for just a second. It's a rare error if you look at the stats most of you might even scratch a little on the plus. Yeah, I would say maybe a tip and a comment. I think the comment being like you don't have to hit it as good as you feel like you need to to be a plus handicap. I think it's, you know, again, boring answer, but just having really, really strict routines and you know, thinking about the game the right way like there's obviously a barrier to entry that you need to be able to hit. Kind of certain, I would say certain distances and you can't be spraying it out of bounds physically. But once you get to that point where you can keep it in play, it's really just about doing the boring things over and over and over, you know, making sure your alignments and check, making sure you're putting strokes not out of whack. You know, don't miss any three and four footers. It's nothing. Again, if I hear the word shallow one more time, I might lose my mind on social media, but it just doesn't, it just doesn't require all that enough.

46:43I'm not that bad on I see people will kind of bounce it around and getting stuck into those, you know, traps of picking up tips from here and there. It's easy to do. I don't blame anyone for doing that because it's if it can happen, but it's just the simple stuff over and over and over and just putting in the time. It's not a fun answer, but that's the reality. That's the thing though that we have hopefully people are learning and I know it's been echoed by a lot of, a lot of players and coaches on the show and I know a lot of people are starting to realize that too. So we appreciate you sharing your routines and all the things you're doing before during after work, man, you're crushing it. So definitely rooting on and appreciate being a guest on Wicked Smart Golf. Thanks, man. It was a pleasure. I appreciate it. All right. Hopefully you enjoyed that interview with Jeff and just a reminder, no matter how old you are, you can improve. I just want to stress this again. I'm not saying 40s old because God, I'm 38, but I want you just guys to be thinking like, hey, I can improve. But then ask your question, how can I improve? Right. Golf is all about better questions, the better questions we pose our mind, the better answers we're going to get.

47:43How can I improve? How can I hit it longer? What do I need to do to take my game to the next level? Those are the type of empowering questions that will take your game to heights you could not even imagine. So whether you're 40, 50, 60 or you're younger, it doesn't matter. Set big goals and go after them relentlessly. I want you guys to use these awesome interviews as inspiration for your own game. Don't just listen to it and say, ah, that made me feel good. Take action. Do one thing by that indoor punting green. Say you're going to get a simulator. Find a dome you can practice at. Whatever it is, start doing something specifically for the offseason. I know a lot of you guys are going to have a very different schedule coming up soon as a weather changes. So hopefully this will give you some info. And again, one of the best ways to improve is learning how to think like a pro using decade golf. And once again, you can use the code wicketsmart at checkout and it'll save you 20% on your investment. Thanks so much for listening. And as always, I hope you have an epic day on the links.