GolfWell Podcast

Drew Steckel sits down with our partner, Tour Coach with Tony Ruggiero. Drew has been recognized as one of the Best Young Coaches by Golf Digest - he shares his journey to coaching Tour Players and his keys to being a great coach. Tony and Drew talk in depth about being on tour, what are the most effective ways of coaching.

This episode is from our partner, Tour Coach with Tony Ruggiero. Tony sits down with Baden Schaff, the CEO of Skillest and a leading PGA Professional, to discuss : what's changed in the world of golf over the past 20 years, what's crucial for teaching golf presently - especially amidst the pandemic, and what the future of coaching will look like.

They also breakdown what it takes to be a great coach, and how technology is playing a significant role in the evolution of golf; another great episode you won't want to miss.

Our Partner, Tour Coach with Tony Ruggiero sat down with Boyd Summerhays. Summerhays speaks frankly on what he's realized in hindsight about what hurt him as a young player, but how it's also made him into a better coach. They both share what makes a good coach, why variety is important in the players they coach along with a lot of great expertise.

This week we talked to Mike Malaska about what is good Ball Striking. He shares three super specific ways that you can improve your ball striking in practice. This discussion has tons of insight, great stories, helpful tools for you to check out.

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We are kicking off a new series today; it's all about ball striking. How can we do that more effectively? We have tons of accessibility to feedback with golf technology, but how do we use it to improve our ball striking. To kick off this series, we have Tony Ruggiero sharing what he is paying attention to when it comes to his Tour Pros and their ball striking - full of great info.

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We talk with Dr. David Harris who works at the University of Exeter in the UK, he’s a researcher in psychology and specifically interested in skill acquisition. He's done a lot of research in the world of VR, and has some conducted studies on quiet eye with VR equipment, and experimented with using VR as a way to practice. He offers insightful and relevant conclusions in terms of technology and sports.

Kevin Kirk is a PGA Master Professional, 2019 PGA Teacher of the Year and a GOLF Magazine Top 100 Teacher in America. He has taught an impressive list of students, works with a bunch of players on the PGA tour and is currently the Director of Golf Instruction at The Woodlands Country Club. In this episode, he talks with Tony Ruggiero candidly about his coaching career and the big picture in developing great players.

Our Partner, Tour Coach with Tony Ruggiero had the chance to sit down with Chris Como. Como shares what he's learned from his coaching career, why Bryson and him work well together, his favorite players to watch, and what he does first when working with a new tour player.

Masters Roundtable with three amazing coaches: Jeff Smith, he works with Viktor Hovland, Chris O'Connell, who works with Matt Kuchar and Jamie Mulligan who works with Patrick Cantlay.

They each have a ton of insights into how they're preparing for the masters - what they're doing beforehand, what they're doing there while on-site and some insights in strategy, jam packed with insights.

This installment is part two of our conversation with Gal Ziv. If you didn’t catch the first part, make sure you go back and give it a listen – there’s some really interesting stuff we talk about that’s sure to pique your curiosity.

Today, we’re going to talk about gaze behavior and the quiet eye.

The quiet eye as described by Gal, is “the final fixation on a specific area in your visual field before a critical movement.” In golf, this is usually your last look at the ball before you hit a shot. Gal’s research has found that the best players in the world have longer quiet eyes than amateurs. In other words, “they fixate on the golf ball for a longer duration before they putt… and they maintain it longer.”

Gal has applied the principle of the quiet eye in his research of people putting. He’s found that golfers of all levels have longer quiet eyes on successful putts and shorter quiet eyes on unsuccessful putts. What makes this interesting is that the concept of the quiet eye is something that can be taught.

He then goes on to describe what that training looks like. Keep in mind that in order to do this, an eye tracker is needed.

To begin, a golfer starts in their address position and gazes at the ball. After the student looks at the hole and is comfortable with where they’re aimed, they fixate on the ball for two to three seconds. From there, the stroke begins, and the fixation point of the golf doesn’t change.

The tendency for most golfers is to look up from the ball before they’ve made contact. Gal’s research shows that this is a sign of a “busy brain.”

I asked Gal why he thought the quiet eye was so important in putting. He said there is more than one theory. First, the preprogramming hypothesis maintains that “once your eyes are fixated on the ball… you give your brain time to calculate and plan the correct movement.” The second theory is that “during the putt… if something isn’t right, you still have time to correct it.” Lastly, the inhibition hypothesis maintains that “quiet eye time gives you time to pick the option you think is optimal…”

When I asked Gal if the quiet eye concept translated to other areas of the game like full shots, he said that there’s more research that needs to be done. However, theoretically speaking, there’s no reason the same idea shouldn’t apply.

Gal has some interesting suggestions on how you can implement the quiet eye practice into your putting. First, he says people have to understand that it’s not easy in the beginning. However, “after 10 or 20 repetitions…” it’s not that tough. One of the best ways to do this is to “maintain a journal.” This will help you see if it helps you or not. For most people, improvement will be gradual, it doesn’t happen in a single day.

Once again, Gal shared some really interesting information with us. We can’t thank him enough for his time and hope to hear more about future work he’s doing in the future.

Thanks for taking time to hang out with us here on the GSL Podcast. We have more exciting content on the way so stay tuned!