2008-06 – June 2008 Coaching Hour – Review of The US Open

…….June – Review of The U.S. Open…….

 – Review of the Open

 – Developing a Ground Stroke

 – Directions for Using the Balance Pads

It was one of those weird deals where shooters like Gary Greenway would run a station or shoot five out of six, and I’d shoot a one or a zero. And then they’d shoot a one on a station, and I’d shoot six or eight out of six or eight, and it was just kind of all over the place; but I thought the targets were faster.

They threw a lot of midies mixed in, a really good mix of midies with standards, and I felt everything you could see very well. There weren’t really any short windows. They used the correct color targets, but they just set a really challenging course.

There was a lot of talk of how shooters won’t come back if you threw that kind of course again. I’d go back and shoot it in a heartbeat. I mean, I did not shoot well, but part of it was I just did not shoot well, and I know what some of it was.

I usually don’t shoot practice and they had a practice course, and Neal Chadwick set the practice course, and the practice course was pretty close to as hard as the main course. And so you go out to shoot a little practice and warm up and you’re struggling or it doesn’t give you any confidence to go over and shoot the main course.

I shot my best score the morning that I shot at 8:30 and went and shot FITASC without having any warm-up on anything. I went over  and shot a 19 and 20 on the FITASC and shot the same score as all of the master class, Diane Sorentino and all the master class shooters I was shooting with; and the next morning I went and shot a little bit of warm-up and went over and shot terrible. I think that killed me. I honestly do.

If I shoot warm-up targets, I want just some fluffy targets that I can just feel real good and get my rhythm going and whatever. I don’t want a challenging target for a warm-up target.

 Gil: Yeah.

 Driscoll: I thought they were good. They were longer. I just got back from WB Ranch and everything was half the distance, but half the distance puts it at 20 yards to 30 yards.

And, what, Brian, they threw some close stuff to throw you off after you got used to the long stuff. But it probably averaged, what, 40, 45 yards?

Brian: Yeah. I don’t think you had much over 45. I don’t think you had maybe one or two targets, but most everything was right at the 40 yard mark. But knowing Neal, he loves to crank them up, and we all thought that we would give them a little bit more speed, to kind of flatten out the line a little bit more on them; but that in itself to see so many guys because they thought they had so much time with it, and as you know, mother gravity just took it away from so many of them because it was the type of course you had to attack. You could not play with it at all. You had to attack it, and if you played with it, it would just bite you.

 Driscoll: Yeah. That’s very true because Gil, I tried some of the stuff that worked well for me and let it come to the gun, but could not do that on this course. This was too fast. You had to go after it. We shot the white course the last day, and there was a pair of midies, on a tower, the scissor lift.

 Brian: Yeah. All towers were midies. We had 13 of them. Everything had a midi on it.

 Gil: Really?

 Driscoll: Yeah, they were midies and they were out at 40 yards probably. Out on a scissor lift up 35 or 40 feet. And they came out with a full spring, and just about the time you thought you were going to pull the trigger on them they rolled almost 90 degrees and went straight away from you.

And they were so fast that by the time I could see them and feel like I had a line on them, they were turning and going away; and it was just kind of like, throw your gun up and pull the trigger.

That’s one Gary Greenway ran, and Edwin Gill shot a five out     of six on them. I shot a zero on it. But it was one of those that       you just had to play it to the hundred yard line; but the hundred yard line was where they turned, and it was just almost like a spot shooting type thing.

 Driscoll: But there were some great targets. I mean, I’d love to go back and try to figure out how to shoot those, because if you could learn to shoot a decent score on that course, you can go shoot anywhere in the world and shoot.

 Brian: Uh-huh.

Gil: Hum. What was the FITASC like, Brian?

 Brian: Pretty much the same thing. Mo did a real good job with the FITASC. I didn’t see anything that was unhitable. He had a few targets there. He had some on the towers he had one that was a midi when it was launched, it was headed to Lake Charles.

 Driscoll: And I broke every one of those,   Brian.

 Brian: Well, I wound up shooting the FITASC with a 82 on it.

 Gil: My.

 Brian: But I really enjoyed it. I was like Driscoll. My second morning I decided I would go out and do a little warm-up, and all of a sudden I couldn’t hit a quartering target. Well, shit.

I go buy two more tickets there and said I got to get this done. All it was is that I just was not pushing the gun into the target, and once I realized what I was doing, then I got cured of that.

Well, guess what? The first target I had to shoot that morning, the last jump out of the box, was a damn quartering target, and I started thinking about it. Guess what I did? I go in there and I miss it right off the bat. But, after that I got settled down.

Anyway, it came out better than I thought it was going to come out, but I really started questioning myself there for a second or two there but I finally got calmed down and I really enjoyed it. I’d love to shoot it again.

 Driscoll: Yeah. I thought the FITASC was easier than the main course. We’re used to seeing the FITASC targets, and it was more along the    lines of what we were  seeing.

And the main course was not really anything that we were not used to seeing in the way of presentation, but there was more speed.

And like Brian said, they were using gravity; and you had to really watch the line and pay attention to the terrain, and they just did a really good job. I’d go back.

 Gil: Now, do you think that the difficulty of the target affected people emotionally after the first day, Brian?

 Brian: Well, we were hearing a lot of noise. I’ll put it this way.

Gil: Yeah.

 Brian: A lot of people were surprised. They just couldn’t believe that they were not getting targets. There was a lot of consternation going on. And I finally told a couple of them. I said: Look, you got to man up on this because you’re going to have to attack the courses. This is not one of these relaxed deals. It’s not going to happen that way.

I said: You’re just going to have to force yourself, you’re going to get out of that little box that you’re in and get in another box that’s going to get you there; but these courses will strip you out of your comfort zone.

 Gil: Do you think that when they took you out of your comfort zone that they’ve made you become indecisive?

 Brian: Oh, sure.

 Driscoll: Oh, yeah. They took you so far into the gag factor so quickly. One of the things that I discussed with you, that I’ve been able to do recently is walk away from a bad station and just walk into the next station and never even think about that last station and shoot.

And I was able to do this here, but I couldn’t hit any targets at the next station. I felt like I was doing the same thing. I wasn’t letting it bother me. Halfway through the first course I was like, okay, this is over with. You might as well just have fun, and I still couldn’t hit the targets. But they had you way out of your comfort zone.

 Gil: Contrast how you were emotionally halfway through the first round the first day now and how you would have been emotionally four or five years ago.

 Driscoll: Four or five years ago I would have been upset, and I wouldn’t have been able to quit thinking about the zero and the one and the two and whatever. Of course, you know, we were shooting four, five six targets, but it didn’t take long to add up my score.

But a few years ago it would have bothered me to the point where I would have just said just forget it. I don’t even know why I’m doing this. You know? What the hell. I can’t shoot. Why am I wasting the time and the money?

And I was there this time; and I knew halfway through the blue course the first day that there was no way I was going to ever recover to do anything in my class; but it didn’t stop me from wanting to finish the course and go through what I could do the next day and actually shot fairly decent the next day.

And the last day I just kind of fell back; and I was bad. It wasn’t as bad as the first day; but it was one of those things where now I’m able to just enjoy shooting, and I had my goal. If I don’t achieve it, that’s fine; but I’m able to just walk off the station and say, “Huh, you know, a zero. Well, that’s not going to help things out any.”

But I leave it behind. At the Open it was different because you real- ize when you shoot a zero. When I shoot now I’m not really conscious of how many targets I shot at that station. I may drop one or I may drop two. Obviously I’m conscious if I run it.

But as soon as I walk away from the station, I couldn’t tell you what the presentation was or you know, how many pair we shot or what my score was. I just blanked it out of my mind and go on to the next. I don’t go look at scores at the end of day. I’ve now learned to go look at the end of the tournament.

 Gil: Yeah. Did we talk about that? We didn’t talk about that on the

Coaching Hour, did we?

 Driscoll: No, we didn’t talk about that.

 Gil: You may want to talk about that. Then I got something I want to read you. What happened to you? You were at the  zone?

 Driscoll: We were at the zone. And I’d shot prelim, FITASC, and the main; and I didn’t shoot very well in the FITASC, and I didn’t shoot very well in the prelim. And I shot the main in the first day. I didn’t shoot very good, and the second day I didn’t shoot very good.

And we shot the last rotation the second day, and Sherry said: Don’t you want to go look at the scoreboard to see where you’ve placed? You might be in a shoot-off. And I said: Oh, man, I haven’t shot well enough to be in the shoot-off. And so we just loaded up the clays cart. I had to drop it at my mom’s in Houston and drive back to Dallas to be at work Monday morning, and so I was ready to leave.

And I got home and punched up I-clays, and I had shot well enough to get a punch in FITASC. I’d shot well enough to get a punch in the prelim, and I was in a three-way tie for first place in my class and didn’t show up for the shoot-off; so I was third, and it was one of the few money shoots. So it was not a lot of money, but I did give up the chance of possibly winning my entry fee back.

Gil: The moral of that story would be…

 Driscoll: Even if you think you haven’t shot well, you might want to go check the board at the end of the shoot just to be sure.

 Brian: Well, I can attest to that. Many times in ‘06, when I walked off the course I didn’t feel like I had placed anywhere, and lo and behold I was either first or third every time. So I said, ooh, this is pretty good.

 Gil: It often feels that way. It’s unique to our game. Our game is not a game of perfection. It’s a game of misfortunes and misreads and tons of variables, and it seems as though no matter how well you shoot, you give your opponents or the guys and gals you’re competing against credit for hitting everything you hit and you give them credit for hitting everything you missed.

 Brian: Right.

 Gil: And that’s something that I think we’ve talked on the Coaching Hour quite a few times. I felt that emotion many times. I finished a course with a 82 or a 91 or a, what, 63 one time. I finished a course with a 63 and said, well, that won’t do anything. I won high overall with a 63 out of a hundred.

It’s been amazing to me how those emotions keep going. I was doing some reading the last few days in preparation for tonight, and I came across a chapter in Pia Nilsson’s and Lynn Marriott’s book toward the end. The title of the chapter is Good, Better, How, and I want to read one paragraph to you; and I think it’ll kind of summarize what you’ve been saying just with the point that I wanted to make to you about how you would have handled that emotionally four or five years ago.

“How we think about a round after we’ve played it is as important as how we prepared for the round. There is good in every experience no matter what the outcome. There is learning in all that we do. The round you have just finished is the beginning of the preparation for the next round.”

“Remember, you are creating an emotional memory on which your mind and body will draw in the future. You will find that your true self is most exposed under pressure, both on the course and off. It is all about self-understanding, learning to manage what you want to remember.”

That’s a big one. Let me read that again.

“Learning to manage what you want to remember and always making sure your honest evaluation of yourself ends up being translated into an action. It’s about more than what you shot. It’s about how you played.”

I don’t know why I underlined that in this book, but now I do. I go through books a lot and I just underline things, and that’s a lot about what the first chapter is about in Bob Rotella’s new book called The Golfer’s Mind. It’s about golfing philosophy and how he philosophically looks at the game and its variables; and we’re going to get into that in just a few minutes.

Yeah. I would think that when people get out of their comfort zone, especially on longer birds, that they’re not used to shooting them, things that are deceptive, they become very tentative.

Hey, Gary, I’m going to ask you a question if you’re still there.

 Gary: Yes, sir, I’m there.

 Gil: When you were witnessing the All Around Championship with those experienced top shooters, they never got hesitant at all, did they?

 Gary: Gil, I wouldn’t say they never got hesitant at all; but on the stations where they did well, there was no hesitation. There was total commitment to what they were doing, very decisive; and on the few times when you saw somebody kind of be a little indecisive about something, in that crowd, it kind of really stood out, and it really made it pretty easy to anticipate what was about to happen.

And invariably if they took a lot of time in the cage and weren’t sure before they shot the first pair, it did not turn out to be a good stand for them.

 Brian: Uh-huh.

 Gary: But, yeah, that was the thing that I came away from watching those guys with just for the most part just total commitment, total decisiveness, no doubt; and they just got after it.

 Gil: Did they ask for more than one show pair?

 Gary: Very seldom. It did happen. The British shooters were more apt to do that.

Gil: Yeah.

 Gary: They tended to do that a fair amount. I say a fair amount. I mean, they did it more than anybody else; but you really didn’t see that a lot. I think maybe on this long tower shot, maybe on some of the longer presentations, which there weren’t really a lot of. But, for the most part, like I said, they were very decisive and they just got after it.

 Gil: We talked about that a little bit last week or last month. Gary, you listened to that CD today coming over here, didn’t you, or yesterday?

 Gary: Yeah, I did.

 Gil: Anything else you want to add to that that wasn’t on the CD? I know we had kind of summarized that up. I got caught with my pants down with a short get-out time, and I was going to talk to Steve about that; but he can’t be with us tonight, and I just didn’t know whether there might have been anything else that was interesting or out of the ordinary.

I remember that you remarking that there were no gimmies on the course. It was all tough, and that sounds pretty much like what it was at the Open.

 Driscoll: One of the things I found interesting, I went and watched a little bit of the last shooting at the Dallas Gun Club and watched the superfinal, whatever they called it.

 Gil: Yep.

 Driscoll: And one thing that I found interesting was Scotty was up three targets over Digweed, and he was driving around with his wife and another lady, and pull up; and he’d drive off and he’d go do this and he’d go do that.

And Digweed, when about the second squad went out to shoot, he kind of walked up and he’d stand there and watch; and then he’d walk over to the other side, and he’d stand there and watch a little bit. And somebody would come up and talk to him, and then he’d walk back over here and watch a little bit and then they’d walk. He’d walk over here. And he was looking at all the different target angles and watching everybody shoot them, and Scotty wasn’t paying any attention. He rolled up when it was time for him to shoot and got out. And George was ready to go; and George just smoked it on the last one and picked up the targets and passed him and won the whole thing. And I was like, all right, there’s a little lesson right there, you know.

The guy is supposedly the best shooter in the world and he did not take anything for granted. He came and stood and watched, walked around and looked at all the angles and watched these guys shoot these targets and knew what was coming.

And so that was was very interesting to me.

 Brian: He did the same thing in the World Shoot that we had at the National Gun Club a number of years ago, just pretty much the same thing. He was in the shoot-offs, and he left the area where everybody else was congregating around the shooting stand. He just walked away from them.

 Driscoll: Hey, Gil, you’re a big reader and you come up with these books. Have you ever heard of The Inner Game of  Tennis?

 Gil: Yes, sir. By Tim Gallwey. You  bet.

 Driscoll: Yeah. I found that in my 1974 edition. I found that in my mom’s stuff the other day. I opened it up and looked at Chapter 3, Part 1, quieting the mind. And I said, okay, I think I’ve got to read that book.

 Gil: Yeah. That was the precursor. That was the first book that he wrote on mental control, The Inner Game of Tennis. And that was one of the first ones to come out that talked about conscious and subconscious and quieting the mind. And his editor came to him and said: Nah,   you just got lucky on this one and because then in tennis nobody was talking about the mental game. It was all about forehand, backhand, two-handed backhand, slice. You know, it was all about ground strokes and fundamentals, and nobody was talking about the mental game.

So his editor came to him and said: Okay. I want you to do the formula that you have done here in tennis. Okay? I want you to do the same formula mentally and physically in golf, and I want you to be shooting below 80 in a year and catalog it in a book, which is exactly what he did.

And then the book that we first got a hold of was The Inner Game of Golf, the revised edition because the first Inner Game of Golf book was just a chronological summation of what he did when he went through to implement his mental system in the game of golf. The revised edition he comes back in and explains a lot of the things and takes different points to greater lengths.

I typically judge the value that I have for a book based on how    much red ink is in it. That book’s cover is blue. Its hard cover is blue. The inside is 90 percent red.

It’s that book, Driscoll, that really explained to me the difference in conscious and subconscious. He calls it self one and self two.

And it’s a tremendous book. It takes about three readings for    me to really understand what he was trying to get across, but it is a tremendous book. I go back to that book frequently. He’s got what he calls the bounce-hit routine, and he talks about routine and rhythm, and he talks about time durations in routines.

I think Stevie Ray gave me mine. He said: Obi-Wan, this is the force, trust it, in the inscription because he found it; and he said: Have you read it?