Hands First: A Different Way to Think About the Golf Swing with Ethan Bramble

0:00Kick off the fall season with Tacovas. Our quality Western boots are handcrafted with 200 meticulous steps for broken and comfort right out of the box. And each pair is built for all fall's festive moments, from game day to tailgating to outdoor festivals and long weekends. Find your perfect pair and customize them with complimentary boot stamps and branding at a Tacovas store near you or shop with us anytime at Tacovas.com. The This On The Mark Podcast is brought to you in part by Sonovas. Wherever potential leads you, get there with speed, get there with scale, get there with Sonovas. Sonovas, get there. Welcome, my On The Mark Tribe, so good to have you. It's your host Mark and Norman. And on this show, we are going to dispel the myth that the hands should not be involved in the

1:00golf swing. Ethan Bramble, stay handsy, some really cool stuff, and we're going to help you to get that club face to the golf ball a whole lot more squarely, a whole lot more often by the correct and the more timely use of your hands and your golf swing. We're not eliminating, we're highlighting and we're playing correctly. So glad you would join us, of course. You can follow this, you can follow me on social media. The handles are at Mark underscore, emulment on both X and on Instagram. Best way to reach me if you want to communicate with me is on the YouTube channel, search and subscribe to Mark emulment over there. And don't forget, go and give Mark Collogy golf a follow on YouTube. There you'll find me with all sorts of golf tips. I've just been going over when where it was a long form segment, some 15 minutes, I think it is, on how to drive the ball more powerfully. So if you want to do that, go subscribe to Mark Collogy on YouTube

2:03when you're checking out this podcast on my channel. Again, so glad to have you. I'm really excited. I'm energized. I'm just back from the 2026 Presidents Cup, which was a thrill. Medina was great. The competition was fantastic between the internationals and between the American team. Congratulations to the American squad led by Brandt Snetica, who came back with a tired charge over the final round, the singles, to suck in and eventually overtake the internationals and win the Presidents Cup. All right, without further ado, stay with us after this interview. Don't go anywhere because after the playback, I'm going to share some discount codes and some information how you can get discounts on stuff that can really help you out with your game. In the meantime, here's Ethan. This segment of the On the Mark Podcast, who was brought to you by Sinovus. Sinovus, get there. Once in a while on the internet, I find a Kindred spirit once in a while.

3:07And that Kindred spirit is Ethan Bramble. Ethan, welcome to the On the Mark Podcast. How are you? How's it going Mark? Thanks for having me. This is going to be a really fun time for us to just nerd out and talk about all these things that you're probably seeing online about me talking about the hands and wondering why I'm one of the few people that's actually talking about the things that are actually holding the golf club and golf clubs with hit in the ball. So I'm excited to talk with you today and nerd out. Well, nerd out. I feel like you must be getting a bunch of hate on social media because of what you're talking about. So let's kick it off right there. I'm going to read you a quote of yours. And it goes and I want you just to respond. Okay, first thing off the tub of your head that goes like this, the golf swing is decided. I love that word decided in the hands, not the hips, not the shoulders, not the ground. Then you say the industry has spent decades teaching everything but the interface, the one place where intent becomes motion and first performance

4:10is the correction. Off you go. Yeah, that sounds pretty good. I mean, the whole idea is that in the golf swing, you have intent, right? You have your goal of what you're trying to get the golf ball to do. Right? Everybody has that, whether it's make it curve a certain way, make it go a certain distance. Now it's understanding that the signal that you're trying to send the golf ball needs to be as clean as possible. And that's where hands first performance really comes into play because it's giving you the best chance to send the proper information to the golf ball to make the golf ball do what you want it to do. Now the conventional way for people to think about golf instruction is for it to be more body first focused, right? Pushing into the ground, using the core, focusing on the spine and what the spine is doing. And the problem with that is that the intent starts in your mind. And the more things that that signal has to travel through, right? The further

5:10it has to travel before it reaches the club, the worse the signal in the mudder that signal is going to be when it actually reaches the golf ball. And I think that's probably the biggest mission that I'm on right now is I'm just trying to get people to really just be able to self-analysen correct themselves and understand that the signal that they're sending the golf club needs to be clean and it needs to be intentional. And I feel like handsy is a term that's kind of been branded bad. It's been given a bad, it's been kind of almost taboo in golf where people think that being handsy is a bad thing. And when I look at handsy, I look at handsy as more when the way I focus on handsy is it's more intentional. It's an intentional way of thinking about the golf swing and how the hands are actually sending information to the golf club. And the current way that people think about handsy, I think it's more of a reaction based thing to where they're doing things that

6:12aren't correct in their hands and with their body that is ultimately causing their hands to maybe flip or scoop or things like that. And that's the, I feel like the misconception and I created the name handsy because I just wanted to take an opportunity to really reframe the name and just educate people on the importance of the hands. So I think it's all about just sending a clean signal from your mind, the intent that you have to the golf club, the muddier that signal is, the worse that golf ball is going to perform. If you're watching on YouTube folks, you'll see me scribbling because I have so many thoughts after you're, I want to start with this. You've used the word intent, intention and variations of intent often. And it got me to thinking, Ethan, where most golfers, maybe the ones not at the elite level, their intent is to just hit the ball close to the hole as opposed to messaging the golf ball in a certain way. They get over the thing and

7:17they're like, I'll just hit it over the water. Yeah, that is kind of, it's intentional, but you really not focusing should I say on anything that's really going to alter how this ball flies. And you your comments off with that, you know, talking about draws of fades or highs or lows, most club golfers are just like, well, hit the ball. And I feel like speaking of muddy signals, that is particularly muddy. So let's help, let's help people galvanize the intent and their focus a little bit better. Please. Well, I feel like there's levels to intent. Just like there's, just like there's hindi caps, right? Like the golfer that's just thinking about, okay, let me try to see if I can get this white ball from here to the fairway. And I don't really have a clear understanding of how I'm going to do that. I just hope I'm going to. Those are probably the golfers that aren't going to level up, right? I feel like as your intent levels up, your handicap improves. And I think that's

8:20kind of the way I look at it is I feel like everybody's on this journey of just trying to get the ball in the hole as fast as possible, right? But you have to be thinking about things in the proper way, right? And that's where I feel like I'm just I'm on this really deep mission right now to where I just want people to understand that you have to have just a really clear understanding of what your objective is as a golfer, right? Like when you're standing over that golf ball, I don't think it needs to be a lot of thoughts, but I do think that you have to have a core understanding of what your hands need to do to that golf club in order for that golf club to send the proper information to the ball. Would you use just a game with a game of communication? Oh, yes, that's a great word to that. Would you say maybe that the leveling up with a lot of golfers, even though they might be practicing despite practice is sort of somewhat accidental because you know, instead of being intentional at the very start to say, okay, if I want the ball to go to the left,

9:23this is how I use my hands. If I want to use the make the ball go high, etc, etc. Where a lot of folks like, oh, I've just been playing golf enough sort of stumbled on this and I don't really know why. And then I'm still focusing on how my body's pivoting and how I'm using crown reaction forces. Are you sort of feeling what I'm saying? Yeah, I think the people that have stumbled on it probably were fortunate enough to actually start with a really good grip. That's that's something to where when you see the golfers that are like very neatly natural with golf, they do use their hands very, very well. I mean, bubble Watson's a name that just kind of comes to my mind right now to where very self taught, very unorthodox golf swing, but he actually does use his hands incredibly well. And there's people said that he uses as the way he golfs is with his eyes and his fingers. And I think that's a really cool way to think about it because he does understand what his hands are doing. And I think, yeah, there's people that are going to stumble upon it and they're just naturally and neatly great at golf. And that's great. But they're in the small percentage of

10:24people. And I'm focused more on the 99% that are really trying to figure out how they can get better at this game. And there's been countless billions and billions of dollars that invested in this game. And handicaps in the last 40 years just aren't trending in the direction. I think they should be trending in, which is why I'm just so focused on everything I'm doing with handsy. Well, thankfully. And as I mentioned, I'm sure, you know, when you do a post and you've got a really cool Instagram handle with some really fun there. I'm sure you get your commensurate amount of folks going, no, this is wrong. But you used to term earlier and, you know, when I was a young man growing up many moons ago, David lead better was a mentor of mine. And he talked about the dog wagging the tail, not the tail wagging the dog. It was correct. And I will say this with deep difference for the different and mentor and lead.

11:24When I went that way, I as a teacher and certainly as a player, I miss hit a lot of shots personally and folks wouldn't really have an idea of how to get the ball moving around. And you use Baba Watson who grew up hitting whistle balls around his house. Yeah, all balls obviously spin a whole load more, right? So he quickly understood to make this ball go straight. I've got to do X with my hands and my wrists. Right. And too many folks nowadays because it's the loudest voices that get the most traction on internet on the internet where they talk about rotation and spine angles and early extension and there's all these buzz phrases. Yeah. But for every observation that they make, you can find someone at the highest level of the game who does what they're saying you shouldn't do and yet they still hit golf shots online and as they desire all the time. Yeah, I feel like there's just a lot of information out there right now. And that's where it's it's I'm on just like I said of a mission. I'm very much a missionary and this kind of objective that I'm

12:30trying to do with everything with handsy where I just want to make the game easier for people. I love this game. This game just brought me a lot. It's probably a lot of enjoyment in my life. And I just feel like if we can get people to just be able to self analyze and correct themselves in a way that just makes it more enjoyable and less of this paralysis by analysis and all these different things that come about when you're actually thinking from a body first perspective. That's that's my mission. Every time I create a piece of content, every time I put something out there, it's it's intentional. Yeah, well, look, it's I'm thankful and I'm glad we get to introduce you because it is a bit of an epidemic. I will say right now with the advent of information. And that's where my podcast originated like 11 seasons ago. Was there information overload, but no wisdom and understanding to apply this stuff appropriately. Yeah. You did a very nice comparison like a contrast between the two methods. Let's call it your hands method and then

13:35the industry standard. I'm not sure if you have it in front of you, but I'm going to read each one back to you. We'll contrast and I'll let you just elaborate if that's cool. Cool. All right, cool. Folks, you can find this at stayhansy.com. Here's the fix the swing and the ball will follow method, which is the body first. You call it fix the interface or the communication, the link, and the rest follows first with the body first method focus on rotation and turn where you talk about focus on handle, force, and grip pressure zones. Let's talk about those two and contrast them, please. Well, I feel like it kind of goes back to what we're talking about with all the information online right now. You hear the most popular thing and if you're at the PGA show, the force plates are everywhere. There's force plate companies. There's force in how you're pushing into the ground is definitely the more prevalent force that people are thinking about in the golf swing right now. And actually why I created this little guy, the force ball is I want people to understand that

14:40the more important force you should be focusing on in the golf swing is how you're actually applying force away from your body against the golf club because a lot of the thinking about ground reaction forces and things like that, there's more of a downstream effect. And there's a lot of things that happen downstream in the golf swing right there's how you're turning, there's how you're tilting. I like to think about it's like five or one specials. That's how I talk about it with my students to where if you have that kind of focus when you're holding the golf club on how you need to actually apply pressure and force against it, you're going to get a lot of huge benefits to that. You're going to be able to use the ground better. You're going to be able to rotate the body better because the body I look at it as more of like a supporting role. I think it supports the hands. I don't think it is the engine. I just don't believe in that. I haven't had a ton of success with that with my students and I believe it's more just supporting right this this functional unit between your hands and your arms is connected to the body. So I'm not saying it's it's hands only.

15:42I'm saying it's hands first. Which is a good way to think about how from a coach perspective, I'm always getting my students to understand the fix could be related to your hands and what you're doing to the golf club. I think that's the quickest and easiest way to do it. And it's the one that will cause the like least amount of paralysis by an analysis because if I just handed you a hammer and I said, take this hammer and just hammer it into the to hammer this nail into the wall. I'm just going to grab the hammer and do it. You're not going to think about how much force you're putting into the ground or how you're torquing your body. You're just going to take it and be a normal athlete and just hit it. And I don't think often you see me any different. So I feel like it's just reframing people's way of thinking about how you can self-analysed and correct yourself if you understand the core principles of how your hands are actually holding the implement and actually applying force against it and not worrying so much about downstream about how you're playing force into the ground and how you're rotating. When you start thinking more downstream, I feel like that's where the

16:45keep using the term paralysis by analysis and paralysis by analysis is very much a symptom of thinking about all these abstract angles of what your body is doing and not really focusing enough upstream of how you're actually holding and applying force against the implement that you're hitting the ball with. I'm going to say this is going to sound trite but as you describe that, my brain's going here and that look ultimately despite all the research and everything that's going into the game right now, golf is a batten ball sport. Like you say like hammering a nail or playing ping pong or tennis or paddle ball or a paddle pickle ball, whatever you do. It's the same deal. And the reality is the ball spins more and travels faster. The golf ball that is than every single one of those sports I've listed. So in other words, ideas folks that you have about moving a tennis ball, those same things apply with the golf club. Are you with me? Absolutely. And I feel like the big thing too is that the hardest thing about golf

17:48is that actually it's a stationary object sitting on the ground. I mean, golf is one of the few sports where we're actually striking the turf. Like it's all those other sports that you mentioned like pickle ball and tennis. They're very much reaction based sports, right? To where the ball's coming at you and you can just react and hit it and use your hands. So you have less time to think, right? So that's where if you hear me kind of talking about a lot of this, it's very much from a kind of philosophical understanding, but just trying to reframe how people think about it, because you are thinking in golf more than any sport, because you have time to think. You can't react. You're not reacting to as much. Now what I like is I like for it to be more reaction based with understanding how your hands are actually running the show because that's just an inherently more natural thing for people. I think most people aren't thinking about how they're talking in their body or using all their ground reaction forces when they're playing these other sports. So why do they have to change when they come to golf? Yeah. Well, look, what you're saying is something

18:53something I've always believed with, but you putting it together in such a logical sort of way. So with that, I want to hit you with this is another contrast. At body first, there's a focus on positional cues and you use stack until X factor. You know, a few examples there. And the opposition to this is you talk about your instrument model with the club being an extension more than anything else. And I have the image then too, because I've often in my lessons said to a person, look, if you've got like a 10 foot stick in your hand and your wife or your husband or whatever has a bug on their cheek, I lost your first sector mark. Yep. Yep. I got you. Okay, cool. I'm good. Yeah. So let's start back again with the piece that you were mentioning with the stack until and everything. Yeah. So you were talking about your first method and then the hands first, you talk about an instrument model where the club is an extension of the body. And I've often described this as where like if my wife is a bug on her cheek and I've got a golf club in my hand

19:56and I want to brush the bug off her cheek. I'm not going to go in there and stack and tilt and stuff like that, but you've said it to the hammer best too. But I left your illustration of the club being an extension of the body. And then to get to the hands, I mean, they are the way the clubs extended to the body. I mean, it's yeah, so logical, but looking this, well, I guess I can bring in my little friend here and talk about how this love is, by the way. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate I'll send you I'll send you one absolutely. But I the reason the compact club was created is that I wanted to bring it closer. I wanted to bring the face closer. I wanted people to have this understanding of how the relationship with your golf club is the most important thing in golf bar none. So by having something that feels like a full length golf club, but is actually more compact form built for real life. I can swing in here in my office and everything. It really creates this better understanding of this hand to club relationship. And I keep talking about how

21:00the golf is it's all about communication, right? Well, the one of the key things to understanding how to have a better relationship with something is communication, right? Any relationship you have in the world, whether it's with your wife, with your kids, with your colleagues, it's all about communication, right? And and if we can have instruments like this to where we can bring something that feels like a real length golf club closer to you, now we're kind of feeling how it is an extension of you because it's a little bit smaller and formed, but it it's all about, like I said, it's the it's the idea of in your mind, you have your intent on what you're trying to do. Now, if that can just travel from your mind through your arms and into the club, that's really our main objective as a golfer is to feel that, but if we're got that intent and then now it goes down through your feet, through your hips, and then ultimately through your arms and into the club, the information that clubs are receiving is just it's not as good. So it's it's a little bit muddy, like I said, and that's where I feel like the club in the relationship

22:05with your club isn't as it's not as strong as it needs to be in it's I feel like that when I think about the extension of the golf club being an extension of your body, I really just feel like it comes down to just your communication and connection with it. I feel like that's really what it comes down to. Hey, for the audio listeners, Ethan's had his compact club in his hand, which is very cool. It's got a molded grip on there. I'm going to talk about that in a second. It's important. Are in shaft. It's very, and the big club is very close to his hands and the club head seems enlarged. So you can see exactly where it would be pointing throughout the swing. I would imagine like a little kids club. Yes, right. And very functional. Now on that club there too, and I feel like Scotty Sheffler has started a movement on the PGA tour with a molded grip because he has one on a seven iron I believe it is. Yeah, absolutely. He practices with that grip every day. I mean, every day. And always checking on it. And I've spoken with his club maker Adrian from

23:11Taylor made. And Adrian says when they have to put that molded grip on a new seven iron, he goes, Scotty looks every shoulder basically to make sure it's exactly straight on there. Yeah. And it's so old school yet so cool. And I'm finding us all been calls as one on a grip the other day. And I'm more and more PGA turbos are focusing on their hands and how they hold it. We're for a while. You know, when I came up back in the Rinderpest, you know, good golf began with a good grip. Then it morphed into, oh, however you hold it, it's fine. Just understand the matchups involved. And now we see golf owners turning the circle back to the good grip. So like you've said, the grip is, are you communicate with the club? It's here in a connection. Intentionality is directed through there. And then I made the argument the other day. It was met with a commensurate amount of hate on social. Scotty is a generational ball striker. We all know this. I've gotten to work.

24:20And some of those freaky follow throughs he makes, right? You know, where you see him, the clubs wrapped around his bodies, all of his feet and stuff like that. Because his hands are so square with a club face, he basically knows the leading edge of the face is the same as what his palms are looking. So he has the ability to save in the golf swing better than anybody else. That's why he creates these follow throughs and stuff. So if he feels out of position, he's just an athlete as opposed to having to manage a wonky grip. And I see you starting to smile a little bit. So I'm going to let you have the microphone go. Well, I've done a lot of content on this. And I really feel like one of the geniuses of Scotty Shufflers, how despite everything he's doing with his feet, his grip stays perfectly intact. And if you look at the concentration and the focus he has of how he's putting his hands on the club and I mean, he's got good pinches between his thumbs and four fingers. I talk about that a lot. The molded grip obviously helps

25:21slot those pinches in there. But it's amazing how everybody talks about what he's doing with this feet and it is a really remarkable thing. But I think the more remarkable thing is how everything he's doing with that and all those forces and torques that are happening at the body and at the feet, his hands haven't moved a lick. And I just think that is where I just think it's amazing. And I feel like the average golfer could benefit a ton if they just understood that putting your hands on the golf club isn't just a set it and forget it thing. You have to be very intentional of how you're pushing, how you're pulling, how you're twisting, how you're actually using your hands at every single point in the swing. I don't think there's ever a point when I'm hitting a golf shot to where my hands aren't actively trying to do something to the grip. And I see that with Scotty with everything he's doing to where I smile about it because I'm visualizing everything just the craziness of his swing but just the absolute artist that he is with his hands. And I just

26:27don't feel like it gets enough of a people look at the oh yeah he's got the mold to grip. But then yeah, but look at how well he sets it. Look at how well the first foot his club is starting first. He's not trying to think about how much he's pushing into the ground. He's actively pushing with his palms pivoting his fingers back of his palms. Getting the club to actually rotate and pivot around his body. And then from there, yes, his body is running the show and he's pretty passive from the takeaway to the top of this hands and then just rides that all the way to the finish. But Scotty's doing all of his work at the address position and to start his swing with his hands. And then he just holds on and just rides that and uses his feet and uses the ground to kind of create the momentum for it to pivot back. But I think the average golfer probably is thinking, oh okay, well I'm just going to use the ground and hope my hands are just kind of along for the ride. That's where I get a lot of pushback on social about this and I don't really care about that.

27:31I approach that more just whatever. I mean, I've got more work to do to educate people on the importance and I don't really care about the negativity. I'm pretty confident in myself and what I'm talking about. But I feel like that's the genius of Scotty. It's his deep, deep focus of the importance of how well he's connecting to the golf club and then from there, understanding how to initiate his swing properly. And then just from there, I feel like you can just ride that all the way from the top to the finish and just keep the same pressures, same forces that he had at the address position and the takeaway all the way into the finish. And I, he could hit, you could set 10 more balls down and his grip wouldn't change an inch. And that's the crazy thing. If you look at the average golfer, they're putting their grip on kind of set it and forget it and then hit a shot and then kind of set it and forget it again. But it's moving all over the place, right? It's twisting, it's turning, it's putting all these weird torques and forces on the clubs that

28:34are just making your life way harder than it needs to be. So that's the reason I feel like I smile because Scotty just, he has that and that there's no secret to why he's the best ball striker that we've seen in the last 20 years because he has that deep understanding of how to have the proper connection and communication with this golf club. He doesn't skimp on that and I feel like the average golfer could learn a lot from that. It's not just getting a mold of grip, it's understanding what that mold of grip on locks. Absolutely. Couple observations to that. That's why to me in my opinion, his distance control is as without peer. I mean, I've seen everyone seen the post where Scotty will hit a ball and he'll tell you how far it's flying to within a yard and then he's always correct because the sense the hand is incredible. I will say this too and I've had Randy Smith on the show, Randy being his longtime instructor. And I to me it was a compliment because when I asked the question, Randy's like, you know, that's pretty intuitive of you. No one's ever

29:37asked me that and it's like because you watch Scotty and you talk about his hands and the awareness and how they never move and how that link is essentially cemented and he's very aware of it. When he gets his hands on the club correctly, you'll see me always stands and looks at the hands and he traces up the shaft and looks at the leading edge. This is pretty shut. And then the club goes down to the ball and he's hands never move. From when he's got his hands on the club to when the golf ball leaves, the hands don't worry. Everything else is gyrating. And when I think about you and your term connection and the clubs in extension, he's got the most important connection. It is like death, I mean, I don't want to say steel because that is hard, but it doesn't deviate an inch. And that's why I mean, I've all the other stuff can go on, but he still finds a way to put the club face properly on the back of the golf ball. That's why people are copying him. Sam Burns is really great friends with Scotty.

30:39Sam Burns uses a mold of grip. You realize in every PGA tour player is trying to find that little inch that can allow them to kind of make up ground that they're missing, right? They're standings and they're world rankings for a reason. So you know where you stand and you know how you are ranking relative to a Scotty Schuffler, right? And Scotty Schuffler just feels like he's in a different planet and his putting. If he got his putting dialed in a little bit more this year, he would have had the same year arguably they had last year. But yeah, I feel like everybody is starting to kind of become more awake into this. And also as data starts to come out and we start to see how tour players are actually using their hands. That's where I feel like we're going to start to see this really start to shift or this paradigm is really going to change because that's when force plates really became a big prevalent thing, right? When you had guys like Mark Blackburn and everybody in John Tattersol and all these great names talking about the benefits of

31:42ground reaction forces and things like that from all the TPI studies and everything. And I think how the hands are playing forces, the next thing that's going to kind of be this paradigm shift and golf tour, people are going to realize it's like, oh, there was there was something to this. Like there's a reason Scotty's doing this. There's a reason, I mean, you'll get tiger from 2000. There's no better use of the hands in history than that time. And I mean, not many people will argue with that. If you take tiger from 2000, everybody can visualize that. If you take him away and you just show the club pivoting, there's a lot of rotational forces. There's a lot of twisting. There's a lot of just amazing artistic movements that are happening with that golf club. I would challenge you when you think about it and you have that visual to think, how is that club pivoting the way it's pivoting? And I would be very shocked if the conclusion you came to is that of how he how you're using the ground and how you're actually rotating your body.

32:46And that's where I feel like from a body first way of thinking about things, you're thinking about, we'll just use pivot as an example. Everybody thinks pivot, they think, oh, how the body's pivoting and how the we're getting the X factor and all these kind of dogmatic things that exist in golf of thinking about pivot. But I would challenge you to actually think about how the golf club is pivoting around your body. And what that unlocks, right? And that's why when I just visualize that 2000 swing from tiger, it's the most amazing pivoting action of a golf club that you'll ever see. And in tiger talks about this to where tigers are very hands-y golfer. There's videos of him talking about saying that he's very hands-y golfer talking, it was a tailor-made thing that he did with Jason Day and Rory. We're talking about chipping and how he feels like the first thing that moves is the club head before his hands and before anything and the same thing with putting. He's very hands-y. So everybody lives and breathes on everything that tiger says. They worship the

33:48ground he walks upon. And for great reason, he's best golfer in history and arguably. And I feel like he's just out there. He's talked about he's all hands. Yes, he's focused on the body. But at the end of the day, his hands are the only connection he has with the golf club. So if you're not focusing on that, then what connection do you really have with your club? And that's where I feel like, I'm not trying to rant too much, but I'm just trying to challenge people to think about golf in a different way. Because I believe that the current way that people are thinking about the golf swing is why the trend that we are currently seeing with handicaps in the last 40 years is trending in a very static direction. And I do feel like there could be a lot done to that. And I feel like things are going to start changing with technology coming out on how to measure the grip and forces applied. And there's going to be a paradigm shift. But there needs to be before that happens. People need to think about things differently and challenge the way that they're thinking about

34:51the golf swing. Yeah. You have sort of perfectly there encapsulated a statement you made in this contrast where you talk about the body first method, feels vague and takes a long while to kind of internalize. Because no one can any real parameters on like what the pivot would feel like. I mean, I can describe it to you, but it feels different to everybody. How their body moves given mobility issues or whatever you might want to say. We're getting your hands properly on the club and understanding how your hands move through space. And then the forces that you put on the club face is very tactile. And I use that word because like I think you go in a store and you see a shirt, you like to touch the shirt, you're right, and you get feedback from it. You don't just look at it. And you don't just sit and sit there and say, okay, well, I've got to, I'm trying to think about how my shoulders turn and tilts. That tilt could be a couple of degrees off in your condition. Or you can perfectly, and if your hands aren't delivering properly, you can hit the ball crooked,

35:52as sure as I talk to you. Yeah. And so it's this tactile way of being hands first, understand how you move the club face, and then I almost let the athlete within respond to that. It is where I feel like under pressure, a golfer would probably get better. Am I correct with that? It's just more natural. And it's just like what we do on a daily basis with every sport we play, or everything we do, we're using our hands for everything. Everything we do in the world is something related to, I mean, we're holding our phones way too much in my opinion. There's, we're doing all these things naturally with our hands. So now we're getting into a sport to where the coaches and just the information out there is saying, to quiet your hands. You're like, well, that's kind of weird. Like, okay, all right. And then you just put your hands on the club, set it and forget it, and hopefully navigate your body in a way that gets the club back to the ball. But I just don't think it's natural. Like I, I don't think what I'm

36:53saying is that crazy, right? It's not like I'm trying to reinvent the wheel here. I mean, this is stuff that's been talked about for years, back in the 20s and 30s. I mean, I'm a golf historian, and we got guys like Harry Vardin, Henry Cotton, all saying that the golf swing was like 80, 85% hands and arms. And then that just kind of got lost. And I think that they got lost from a variety of reasons. Clubs got easier to hit. More people got into golf. So we had to kind of find a way to maybe make it a little bit easier in a way, because we didn't have to be so perfect on how we were thinking about things. But in a way, I feel like we've almost taken away the art of the golf swing a little bit. And I feel like the feel and the tactile connection, like you're mentioning, is something that that's the true artistry. Like when I think about golf and I think about all these golf swings, it's, it's just, it's a beautiful thing. And it's, I just don't, I don't know why we're taking the hands out. Why are we quieting the hands? Why are we, why are we trying to take away

37:53the thing that's creating this beautiful pivoting motion? It's like taking an incredible artist and saying you have to hold your paintbrush with your shoulders or elbows or you can't use what the God-given feel and what's actually been handed to you with your, with your not even athleticism. You don't have to be incredibly athletic to use your hands and focus on a hands first way of thinking about golf. So I just feel like the art of the golf swing is missing. You're preaching. Yes, a couple statements I went from you to close. Speaking of close, that's unintended. There's a lot of conversation about rate of closure of the club face through contact. And people in the internet are trying to convince us that the face is stable and it doesn't ever move until you see a slow motion of how the club interacts with the ground and sort of swings open and shut, you know, anyways, are you laughing at me? But I want to use this word flip,

38:54I flip my hands and everyone's talking about the flip as if it's like it's straight from hell itself. I've always contended that a flip is kind of a athletic response kind of deal. And sometimes you'll be at a position and the flip will help square the club face because the last time I checked, I'd rather flip it and I use this term loosely and get the ball going straight in the right distance than be fundamentally sad and have the ball go crooked. So, can you take flipping? This is a really, oh man, this is kind of, this is a really contentious thing that I get pushed back on all the time and it's a great topic. And I think flip is kind of what I was mentioning earlier about reaction and intention. Right? Most people that have, when you think about flipping in the kind of negative context, I think that's more of a reaction to the club being out of position, the shoulders doing a little bit too much, causing the hand path to maybe work towards

39:55the ball too much. And then reaction to that is having to kind of save it, flip it, do a lot of things that I feel like are more of a symptom than a actual, the intention, right? I feel like there has to, there has to be a point as you're coming into the golf ball to where the handle decelerates to allow the club head to accelerate, right? In the golf swing from this perspective here as we're approaching the ball. And as the handle is coming through, the handle is only traveling, I would say from, I would maybe like four or five inches, but the club head is traveling about a foot to a foot and a half, maybe even more. So, that breaking motion of the handle decelerating and the club head accelerating is a very intentional thing that is occurring in the golf swing that is actually happening right from the get go when you're organizing how you address the golf club, when you get your lead arm on top, your trail arm under, you're essentially

40:55building a wall with your setup that's allowing you to have that feeling of the handle hitting that wall to decelerate, to allow the club head to accelerate. But again, we're very intentional with all this. And I feel like flipping is, it's a reaction of a lot of things not being organized properly prior to it. Yeah. And I feel like that's the mean feeling. I feel like and I think on the other side of the equation, the natural fixes over reaction. And then the next thing you see a bunch of handle draggers and they're pulling on the handle in the worst way to not flip the thing. And then they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if they left dependent on it. But I think that's for a different time because I kept it. I'd rather have the flipper. I'd rather have the flipper because at least they're getting the club head. It's a delicate balance, right? Because you can't just tell somebody, okay, take your bad grip, decelerate the handle and flip the club head at the ball. There has to be some organization. And I feel like that's

42:00where a lot of my content comes in is that I'm teaching people how to organize their hands and arms in body to get the golf ball to do what we wanted to do. But it's it I just feel like it has to be intentional. Yeah. Well, intentional certainly the intentionality is a big deal. And the proper understanding of how and when wins important to the hands moving space. So to that, I want people to tell you about your mini golf club, the compact club. And then I've got going to get the wrong name, but that's very small. Yeah, absolutely. California folks were like and find those because I mean, if we're going to do hands correctly in the golf swing, we may as well get the right influence in our hands to learn the motion and the feel. So so we can get all the products on stayhansy.com. I do all the content on Instagram that links to the page, some files on at stay handsy. But the big thing that you need to understand in the golf swing is that you have two things that are actually you should be focusing on in the golf swing

43:03with your hands. You have your palms applying pressure or force away from your body. So that's where this force ball comes in. If I just hold this force ball and push against it with my palms, this is how we're actually creating the proper connection of our hands to the handle. And really feeling a consistent distance of our hands away from our body throughout the entire golf swing. Just taking our palms and just pushing and feeling that force applied is the foundation of the having the consistent arc and controlling the low point in the golf swing. Now from there, once we understand how our palms are actually pushing, we do have to curl our fingers and wrap our fingers around the grip because we're not holding a golf club, but just our palms. But there does have to be some feeling of our fingers curling around it. And that's where having a mold to grip and having something like this compact club come into play because now we're really understanding what our palms are doing, but also how our fingers are pivoting around our palms to control the pivoting action of the golf club. I feel like if you just sat down, you took a compact

44:08club and it won't run into your significant other or your windows in your car because it's compact, it's 22 inches in length, but it feels like a real length golf club. And you just sat here, got your grip right and just let the club just naturally pivot around you, back to the ball, and then to the finish. You're going to feel the weight of the golf club. My friend Martin Chuck, I was just hanging out with him a couple weeks and couple weeks ago in Grand Geneva. And he said, your job as a golfer is to swing the weight of the golf club. And I feel like when we have something like this compact club that feels like a real golf club, but compact, you can feel the weight of it. It's very heavy. So you can feel how it pivots around you. You can feel how it releases back to the ball and then pivots through. So once you educate that, all you have to do is just get out of your chair, bend forward and then let your body support that pivoting action. I feel like that's the easiest way to think about all this is let the understand how the club pivots and let your

45:08body support it. You can use these tools like the force ball in the compact club to just understand how you can feel this tactile feeling. You mentioned tactile a lot. And I do feel like you're communicating with these with these products, whether it's a compact club or force ball or your real golf club, you're communicating through this tactile feel and these touches. Your communication doesn't have to be just spoken like we're doing here with this incredible podcast, where we're doing it through the touch through the feel, through the pressures, through the forces. And that's how the golf club is naturally pivoting around us and back to the ball. And that's the easiest way to understand hands first golf. And folks, what Ethan has done a beautiful job with both these training aids. Because if you've listened to this show for any extended period of time, you've heard me speak of the value of training aids, how you can take a thought and turn it into a feel and feels are how you're going to. That's what you want when the pressure comes down to it. Yeah, my friend, you are at the forefront of a revolution. I will happily come alongside you on this one. Love to have you. Well, it's very, very cool. And I love

46:14two that you've, I love the passion you speak about what you're doing because it's true. And I love the fact that you prepared to get into debates with people about this too. Because that's what we're doing on the show. And you're speaking truth, man. So Godspeed. Share the handles again with folks can find you. Well, first, thank you so much for having me on this has been a really great experience. I have a ton of respect for you and everything you're doing for the game. But you can find me on at StayHansy. It's Hansy Golf is the name of the brand. You can find me across all socials, YouTube, Instagram. And yeah, I'm just going to be the guy. I'm not, I'm just getting started. Like I really, like I said, I'm on a deep mission to get people to understand the importance of thinking about golf in a hands first perspective. And I hope, I hope we provide a lot of value for everybody today. You know what I love. Because you, because if someone says to their buddy in the grill room, they're like, Oh, my swings too handsy. It's like the worst thing in

47:17the world. And you have chosen that as the, as basically the title identifier for what you're doing. So God bless you man. Keep up the good. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, I appreciate it. The segment of the on the mark podcast, it was brought to you by Sonovus. Sonovus, get there. Well, Ethan, thankfully sent me the training aids and I'm loving this, loving them, especially the mini golf club, which has got a nice big face. So you can really see where the leading edge of the club is. So as you learn to use your wrists and your hands more effectively, you can see how that directly manifests to the leading edge of the club face, which is if you're wanting to hit the golf ball more accurately, the most important thing in the world to you. You can pivot your body until the cows come home home. If you've not got the face square, that ball isn't going to go where you intend. In terms of it going where you intend to, I would advocate that you do practice with a

48:17launch monitor. So you can get a bead on where the face is in relation to the path of your golf swing. That creates sad spin, right? I'm an ambassador flight for FlightScope. Go check them out flydscope.com. Use my code on the mark. Get yourself 10% of anything you get on the website there. From the big flight scope, the X3, or down to the Mivo next gen, which is fantastic. It's what I use in my little home simulator. I've got simulator golf courses on there. I use it in lessons. Go check out flydscope.com and use the code on the mark to get yourself 10% off. And then of course golftrainingaids.com. Go check out ethans, but you can get everything you need at golftrainingaids.com. The code there is on the mark 10, on the mark 15, on the mark 15, and you can get 15% off your purchase. Also, don't forget the AI sensor. This is a show about the hands, but how your feet move

49:18you across in space, across the ground, and a big influence on power too. So if you want to get some accurate and easy to digest and use information on how you move and how you use the ground, go check out AI-sensor.live. AI-sensor.live and go check that what they're doing. It'll be worth your while. And of course the book, Lessons From The Best, my book, which is Lessons From The Best Guests thus far on this podcast. Lots of them. That's available at back9press.com slash emulment. B-A-C-K, the number nine press dot com slash emulment. So just to recap, it's not taboo to use your hands in the golf swing. If you look at slow motion footage, you'll see our golfers load and unload the wrists. They release the hands through the golf ball. Great shot makers have a good understanding of how and where and when their hands are moving through space. You can't

50:21cut your hands out of the golf swing. That is misinformation and you've got a big misunderstanding of what's correct. It could be the reason why you're not hitting the ball powerfully or accurately. So go and apply what you hear from Ethan. Try it. Middle-improve your promise. And if you're going to play golf, have lots of fun, make lots of birdies, eliminate those dumbest eggs and take it easy. Sinovus is the bank of here. Here is where roots run deep and familiar faces welcome you home. Here's a place that keeps getting better with time because every generation leaves it better than the way they found it. And here's where our bankers are helping turn ideas into business realities because they understand what it means to be from here. It's where we smile when we see our customers and where they smile back. Sinovus, the bank of here. Sinovus, member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender.