Nik's off-season ball-striking work has him driving it farther but still chasing a score — including a round at Hero World Challenge home Albany Golf Club in the Bahamas that felt better than the 93 suggests. Ryan drops to the white tees at Duke and manifests a 79 with a birdie on 18. The episode lands on a single discipline: cap your blowups, commit to the game you've built, and let the score come to you.

Chapters

00:00 Year of Alchemy Check-In

04:28 Ball Striking and Distance Gains

10:58 Tiger's Albany: A 93 That Felt Better

16:58 Resort Realities and Ernie Els

22:28 Survival Golf at the Ocean Course

30:28 The Quest for Augusta Begins

36:28 Duke Round, Friday Afternoon Crew

40:58 Manifesting the 70s from the Whites

50:28 No Doubles, No Triples

01:00:58 Birdie on 18 for a 79

01:06:28 Commit to Your Game, Stop Tinkering

01:11:28 Masters Picks We'd Like to Forget

Key Takeaways

• Move down a tee box to ingrain the identity of your next scoring level — your brain doesn't know which tees you played from, only what you shot.
• Cap the blowups before anything else: if you're a 5, no doubles; if you're a 15, no triples. The math of breaking 80 means a single double per round is the ceiling.
• Knowing your miss is its own course-management skill. With cleaner contact, Nik's misses shifted by club — leftward on the short irons, rightward on the long ones — and that only became fixable once he stopped trying to fix it.
• Commit to one swing change or one strategy for months before tinkering. Competing fixes never compound.
• Stop diagnosing every bad shot. The faster path is to accept the miss, manage your dispersion, and play the shot you actually have.

Mentioned

Courses: Albany (Bahamas), Ocean Course at Four Seasons Exumas, Augusta National, Duke University Golf Club, Whistling Straits, PGA National, TPC Harding Park, Bethpage Black, Kiawah Ocean Course, Pinehurst No. 2, Rustic Canyon, Torrey Pines, Grandview (Sun City West) | Designers: Ernie Els | People: Tiger Woods, Jim Carrey | Tournaments: Hero World Challenge, Masters, PGA Championship, Sentry Tournament of Champions | Tech: Arccos