Legendary Golf Instructor Harvey Penick's Important Basics | Mulligans

0:00Golf Smarter Premium, number 529, published on March 1, 2016. Legendary golf instructor Harvey Penix, important basics with Jim Hopkins of the Harvey Penix Golf Academy. This is Golf Smarter Premium. Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast, Jim. Hey Fred, how are you? I'm doing well, sir. How you doing? Very good. Another beautiful day in Austin, so how can I go wrong? Yeah, right. I just got back from Austin yesterday and had a phenomenal weekend. First time I'd been to Austin and I'm so glad I got to do it for golf. It's really a fun, fun city. I really had a great time. It's true. It's a lot of fun. A lot to do. Pretty much anything you want to do. But especially someone who likes golf, it's just a wonderful place. Yeah, it is. And on Friday night, we went out to top golf. I tell you, I've never witnessed anything like that before.

1:01I'm so excited for that company to really expand because what was bowling in the 50s and 60s, right? I think this could take over. It's just a great night out for whether you just do the family with the kids or you double date with some friends. Or, you know, you have some what we did. We had four guys who dinner and we drink and we, you know, hit balls for hours. It was just top golf. It's amazing. So I was really glad I got to see it in Austin. Yeah, it's a cool place. They ain't your right, but it's it's my wife has been with some friends, but I've never been. You know, so she's been there to hit some golf balls and stuff, but I've never been over there. So it's great for it's great for that type of golf. And she really enjoyed it. Yeah, they had a lot of laughs. So you should go out there with your daughter. The three of you should go out there one night. You think you'd all have a lot of fun that, you know, they have targets that are 20 yards and 50 yards away. So for kids, and they have kids clubs. They have a whole set of US kids clubs that you can just check out. It's very cool. Yeah, we will. Yeah, we need.

2:03But on our first morning there, we got to spend some time with you at the Harvey Pennic Academy for an hour or so. And then we had a wonderful lunch and then we stayed on the property and played at the Wolf dancer golf club. It's all part of the higher agency on the outskirts of Austin. That's a really impressive facility all the way across. It's something else, isn't it? Yeah, from the from the golf course. You know, where I spend all my time, the driving range over to the resort and all the things you can do with the pool area. The animals they have over there is just and it's so secluded. You know, it's a you you seem like you're going down the road that you're never going to get there once you turn off the main highway. But it does feels like you're out there on your own. That's kind of what they want. They want to get you out there and just, you know, let's just stay here for a few days. What else would I do? Exactly. Not a bad place to have as an office. No, it's true. It's not a bad place to have as an office. And I really enjoyed the golf course. It's a it's a it's a challenging track. It's not bring balls.

3:06All I have to say is bring balls with you. But let's talk about Harvey Peneck for a while, you know, spending some time with you. I've never unfortunately I've never read the little red book. That's the name of it, right? Harvey Peneck. That's right. And but you did give me some notes that you give to your students who go through the Harvey Peneck Academy. Let's talk a little bit about the history of the Harvey Peneck Academy. And then I want to talk about Harvey and your relationship with him. But tell me about the history of the the Academy. Well, Harvey Peneck was the the pro at Austin Country Club from 1922 to 1972. So for 50 years, he was the head of Austin Country Club and renowned as an instructor. Never any plans. I ever write a book or anything. It's the book came out in 92. And it's called Harvey Peneck's Little Red Book because that's what he had. He had a little red notebook that he kept notes in. And only he and his son were the only ones that ever saw it. He never let anybody else read it. Never kept it very privately to himself. But it's late in life. He was very old. He was in his late 80s, 87, 86 when the when the book came out.

4:11So it's kind of what's kind of a legacy thing for him to put out there. There never any expectations of any great sales, you know, just local people they thought would buy. But it very quickly went to number one on the bestseller list is is still we believe to this day the best selling sports book. It's ever been written. So it's a copy. So really people took to it just his I think his nature came through in it and all that stuff. We were very lucky there that came out in 92. I was working early 1993 at Galsman and the owners of Galsman were members at Austin Country Club. New Harvey Peneck really well knew his son Tinsley was the current who was the current head for that time. And they were talking to him and saying you have your dad ever thought about doing a golf academy, you know, it's doing that. He said no, not really. But let's talk to him and see what he thinks. So they discussed it. And at first he was a little didn't really think it was something he wanted to do because he thought they just wanted to use his name. And he said, well, you know, I'll help you do it if you let me be involved in it. And they're like, well, yeah, of course. That's even better.

5:15Yeah, exactly. They just wanted to let his name. Yeah. Perfect. So he was there helping set up with the program laws. You know, he was he was very adamant that we talk people individually that it wasn't like just one big group. We're telling everybody to do the same thing. One point he made over and over again is he really didn't want students listening to what the other students were being taught that if you were telling somebody something to the other student. We tried over here what that is and it incorporated into their game because he didn't feel like that work. So he stressed that over and over again, but learned about his drills things like the swing in the bucket, swing in a weed cutter, slow motion drill, which are all in the book that we talked to students about. So on July the 15th 1993 was the first day of the Harvey Bennett Golf Academy. Two people in the school that day. And very quickly by that fall, there was 20 or 30 people in the academies doing two or three a week by that spring.

6:15There was 40 or 50 people in some of the schools that we were having. Really from the end of 93 through early 95, Harvey passed away on April 2nd, 1995. From that time he was up there a couple of days a week. He was only supposed to be out for a couple hours for doctors orders, but he was usually with us for at least a couple hours. Sometimes more because he loved it so much. We loved having him there and he would talk to the students. Anybody's watching this that was here at the time. We had a big room that were home about 60 people called the pinnacle room. And he would go up on stage. There was a stage made up there for him and he and his nurse would sit there and she would many times have to tell him what people were asking him because he couldn't hear. His eyesight and mind were as sharp as ever, but his hearing was totally gone. So he couldn't hear hardly anything. And he would talk for a little bit, talk for about 15, 20 minutes and then open up to questions and questions could go on for an hour or more, you know, just ask anything's about what he thought about anything golf related.

7:17So that's where it all started and it went on for when it got Smith for 16 years at golf. Until I was fortunate enough to still be there and take it over. Yeah, so were you an employee of golf Smith at the time this whole started? And what were you doing there? Right, I was employee there. I was I was hired on to do a couple of different things. We usually were either working on phone sales because most of their business was phone sales. So being a golf professional, I had a little bit of credibility with people talking, making technical questions and stuff, but basically take a lot of taking orders just doing that. Something to do other than I worked at golf courses before that in a pro like so many other standing behind counters and when that's kind of stuff and given the occasional lesson and had a background with Harvey Pinnick. I'd actually met him and knew him before that coming to work there. Okay. I was very fortunate. My first boss in the business, Mr. George Hanon was a good friend of his and was actually the golf course at the University of Texas when Kighton Crinch over there. So he had a Harvey Pinnick background and knew him so many through him. And so yeah, I was one of the workers given lessons and I'd been there two or three months when the Academy started.

8:25So it was just one of the one of the guys working out there in the Academy all the time, six, seven days a week for years and worked my way up to where I was the director of the Academy in 2008, 2009. And then when Galsmith decided to no longer do the academies, I was fortunate enough with my relationship with Tensley Pinnick and the Pinnick family to be allowed to continue to do the schools. So in 2010, I started doing them on my own and trying to find places to have the Academy at longer than Galsmith. My goal to be at a place like Wolfdancer and the high Regency, that was really my goal to be a place like this. So I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled to have it. It's a perfect place for what we did. What is your relationship with the family so that you were able to start using the car? Was it with golf? Was it with golf? You started using the name Harvey Pinnick again. Their relationship again was because members and they've known that my relationship was it just again, same thing. I knew Tensley Pinnick, Harvey son, knew him really well. He would come out to the Academy occasionally and see us come out to Galsmith and look around.

9:28So we got to know each other pretty well. Talked quite a bit. So that was my main relationship with him. No one, him very, very nice genuine man. He's just just like his dad just a slightly taller version of his dad. It's all all we really is. It's a great guy. I'm very fortunate and blessed to be able to that he trust me enough to let me continue to do the Academy. I feel very honored. Very honored to do that. I mentioned Kite and Crenshaw. A big deal for a lot of coaches is when they have or actually for any product or any coach, any service when you have a PGA tour players name associated with it kind of changes your life. Who, you know, was it Kite and Crenshaw, the primary students that he had or what other names have we heard about and what kind of impact at Harvey have? And I'm asking multiple questions and I apologize. Let's go one question. And ask those questions before either. He had, you know, I had influence. He was the golf coach at the University of Texas for 33 years.

10:35So we talked to golf teams there back in the early days. So there was actually a little bit of a story. The very first golf course that I ever worked out was called Morse Williams. Effectually known as Mo Willing here in Austin, Texas municipal golf course. And it was named after Morse Williams Jr. who was one of Harvey students. And he died in a plane crash and training crashing. Or mid 50s, 1954, 19, 22 years old. He was on he was going to go from being in the military to the PGA tour. He was a tremendous golfer. The famous sports writer Dan Jenkins played against him and some matches back in the old Southwest conference and tell stories about just what a, what a tremendous golfer he was. He was been crunch all back 60, 70 years ago back then. And it's very, very close to the panic family. So that was one but lots of other great players. There was, I think in the initial there was for a while there was only 12 members of the LPGA Hall of Fame and Harvey had taught five or six of him.

11:39Kathy Whitworth was a Harvey panic. And so, Mike McKee right took lessons from him, lots of Sandra Palmer. So we had a lot of influence back all the way through his teaching. Kyton, Crinshaw probably the best known because they were a little bit later in the modern era where people really know those, those guys. Crinshaw especially he was had always been a hard panic. Sluda grew up here in Austin. Ky came a little later. Kyton was actually already playing in 13 years old when he moved here. But they played together played all through college and stuff. So yeah, that was those were really the ones that especially once the book came out that really, you know, people identified with with Crinshaw and especially when when Ben Crunchyle won the Masters a week after Harvey passed away back in 1995. Wow, that was that that was very that really was very special for all of us here that he was able to do that. That was really unbelievable.

12:39Wow, that's a great story. Do you have any tell me your own personal stories that you have in your interactions with Harvey that's that you love to tell? Well, there were so many I was very fortunate back being a fairly young golf instructor late 20s when the Academy started the director of the golf Academy at that time like me. So when Harvey Pinnick would come and do his talks, he assigned me to sit at the back of the room to a learned from Harvey and listen to him talk, but also to watch the door. You know, as people were coming and going so I could help people, you know, where they were supposed to go. So one day I'm sitting there by the door and Harvey's doing his normal talk and I see a man walking back and forth, kind of looking peeking and peeking his head in and kind of looking. So I went back and asked, you know, sir, can I help you with something? He said they told me at Austin Country Club that Harvey was here. I'm an old student of his. I just wanted to come say hello. Like, well, come on in. You'll just join us. Just have a seat. No problem. Just enjoy the enjoy the talk. It's like, OK.

13:40So he came in 30, 40 minutes later. Harvey's talks over and a lot of people would go up and shake his hand and take a picture with Harvey and a lot of that stuff. And he patiently waited so almost everybody was gone to about three or four of us were there. And he walked up to Mr. Pinnick and kind of got down real low so he could see him and sent Mr. Pinnick. I just wanted to come see you. Do you remember me? And he called the man by name and started asking him what he'd been doing and where he'd been and tears just started rolling down this man's face. He just started crying right there in front of him and they talked for, you know, just a few minutes and held hands kind of while they were talking. And then Mr. Pinnick left the guy still stand there. He goes, all the people this man's met through his life and that he remembered me. They remembered my name that we did. He said, I don't know body. He said, I just, you know, some I was a pretty good golfer, but you know, I've gone on to other different things. We really have thought no one's ever said it, but we really think that he probably had a photographic memory. Because some of the stories we've heard about just that he just never really forgot anybody. If you came and took a lesson from him, you knew he remembered you when he come back.

14:44And he remembered things about you when you when you came up there, but he was always like I said, when he would do the talks, he loved when question answer time would come. That's really when he'd light up when he'd really start to do that. So one time the older gentleman stands up probably in his seventies, you know, Harvey's almost nine. Man stands up in his seventies and says, you know, Mr. Pinnick, I'm get a little older. I'm starting to lose some distance. I wonder if you have any tips for me to get a little more distance out of the game. How old are you, sir? And you said, you know, that is agent. He goes, well, you know, sometimes you just got to hold on to what you got. And he said, and everybody laughed and he told him he goes, well, you know, but do you walk when you play golf? No, sir, do you, you know, are you working out at all? No, sir. Well, you might think about, you know, keeping yourself in better shape. It's something we do is we get older. Let's, you know, lose some of our legs strength and stuff. Let's get out there and stay active.

15:45He was also asked one time a guy asked him, what was the worst thing he ever saw students do? And Mr. Pinnick didn't want to answer the question. He always was positive. He never wanted to talk negative about anything. And so he didn't even want to answer it. And the guy kind of pestering me. So I'm just curious. What do you see students do that's just bad. That's just they've been told to do. He said there in a little way when you say someone said there for a minute and thought he literally said there for about a minute didn't say anything. Just kind of looked around. He finally goes, well, he said, I guess it's not just one. It's two. He said, I see sway too many people coming to lessons thinking they need to keep their head down and their left arm straight. And those are the two worst things you can try to do. The whole crowd just went totally silent. He said, but Mr. Pinnick, that's what we've heard. He goes, yeah, I know he said, but that's not usually from golf instructors very much that's usually from your buddies or something like that. He said, that's not really requirement. He said, if you watch real close to good golfers, most good players, their head move a little bit in their backswing and their arms will bend a little bit. They don't try the keyword there. They always said, it's try.

16:52You don't try to keep them straight. If your head stays pretty still, if your arm stays kind of straight, great. But you should be trying to get to golf off. You should be trying to keep your mind clear. You should be trying to have good posture and good. You should be trying to do those things. Not that that happens. Great. But it's just part of the swing. And that's really what he tried to stress to so many of his students was that is that, you know, let's get our mind on what's important here. Let's let's focus on reality. Everybody's a little bit different. We had we have, I think there were nine sequence photographs on our wall. They're at the Pinnick Academy. They had about eight pictures in them. It was great golfers like Fred Couples and Leetcher being known, obviously Tom and Ben Kite. And it was about nine sequences of their other swings. So there's a top of the swing on them. And I used to go tell people I said, for those who really thought they need to keep their arm straight, I'd say, go look at those pictures. And if you look real close, come back and tell me how many of them have their arm straight and how many of them are on the end. And it was pretty much a consensus that there were four of them had their arm straight, four had their arm bent. And one people would kind of argue about whether it was bent for straight.

18:00I said, so what is what should you do? What's the right thing? What what, you know, there's these are all champion golfers who win all over the place. And there's no consensus that they any I'm doing the same thing. So why are we worried about that? You know, let's let's worry about something that might be important to you. And that was really a big key for his golf instruction was let's let's get down to business. Let's get down to the to the fundamentals of what we really need to do. And how you choose to swing the golf club. Now it's that's that's up to you. That's physically you may do it differently than than someone else. And that's why he was so good with like Ben and Tom. They were totally different. Totally different people totally different minds, totally different way they work, but he worked great with both of them. And and the help to make both of them champion golfers. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received with from Harvey from Harvey? You know, as an instructor with the best. Yeah, what's the best piece of advice that you ever receive from Harvey?

19:00From Harvey to be as to just from an instructional standpoint of how to how to be an instructor. Yes, the best thing I learned from him, you know, he never talked to me directly. I was always doing, but the thing I learned from him more than anything else was really two things is, is a listen very closely to your students when they're talking to listen to what to what they're telling him about what's going on and to not be afraid to say I don't know. I don't know. I heard him say that all the time. I don't know. They'd ask him a question and he'd say, I might have to think about that a little bit. I'm not sure. And it's you that you don't you don't. Unfortunately, I think there's too many times, especially as golf instructors, we feel like we have to have all the answers. Right. We've got to be right on it. And it's. Paying you for. Yeah, sometimes there is no answer. Yeah. My first boss I told you about George Handen used to tell me I was very young. He said, if you find yourself talking a lot during a golf lesson, you're given a bad lesson. I think you meant just that really if you're saying a lot of stuff, telling people to do things, you should spend more time just watching and listening and learning a lot about what that person's doing so you can you can help help them what they do. That's really hard.

20:10It's so good about he was one of the first instructors, maybe the first instructor to ever really interview his students before he went out and get him a lesson. You always wanted to come to have you sit down and you know, let's have a let's have a glass tea and talk a little bit about not just golf, but house business going. How's your life? You want to know where you are. He really did. He want to know all about you. And he felt that helped him teach you a little bit better. So it's very very good information. That's something we try to do. Definitely in the academy, even in a group setting, we try to get our note to know our there's a lot of the first morning. That's it is us trying to get to know you before we can teach you. Sure. Sure. So as a golfer, what was the best advice you'd ever heard come out of Harvey? He actually changed my grip without knowing it that he did. I was listening to him do a talk. He would almost every time he would do a discussion about there. He would start off by talking about the grip. And at some point in there, he'd start talking about the different ways, whether you're an overlap, you know, he'd hold his hands up like that. You overlap your fingers. Do you interlock? Are you an interlocker? Do you put do you do 10 fingers? You know, which one fits your best? So there is no one way to do it. Whatever fits best. You know, there's Jack Nicholas and Gene Sarasin and Tom Kai and Tiger Woods. I've been on interlock their fingers together.

21:31And usually people with smaller hands that works better. So you do that. And then overlapping that's more that's more common. Well, really uncommon. It's 10 finger grip. You don't see many people do that. But a lot of people who are baseball players. He's just a very simple figure grip feels just better to people with really small hands. One of the best players that I ever taught was at really tiny little hands. And he was a low single very low single digit handicap. And we moved him from an overlap into a 10 finger grip. And if he said, helped him get about 10 extra yards, you know, I just swing. So just a very simple change. But he was doing that and he went to the overlap and he said, overlapped in grip, where you kind of wrap the pinky around. And I'm doing it. As he's talking, I'm doing it back there. I'm just doing all the different grips. Just kind of mimicking what he's doing. He said, or you can or you just put it right on top like that. And I'm like, I've never put mine on top like that before. And as soon as I did it, it's almost like my hand fell into a slot. Almost like it just fell in almost clicked audibly, where it was just, oh, I couldn't wait to get outside and start hitting some golf balls.

22:38I had up into that time. I always fought my right hand being a little weak, just getting to be able to work itself on top of the club just a little bit. And as soon as I did that, it almost just fell right into position right underneath it. And ever since it fell a little awkward at first, like any change will do. But within two months, I was hitting a little draw versus a fade and have pretty much always done that from now on just with that little with that slight little change of. So it really taught me two things. It was personal mind grip change, but also how just that tiny little something that you do different can make a huge difference in someone swing. It doesn't have to be some big change. It can be a very small thing. Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. So let's let's go into your your red book. Yes. Yes. You you give out. Tell me like this is a compilation of what? What? So you get each of your students who come to the Harvey pinnacle. Yes. Harvey wrote four books. He wrote the little red book. He wrote the week. We'd name them by color because they're all in different colors.

23:41Okay. The other three all have names. There's the green book, which is if I believe the official title is, and if you play golf, you're my friend. There's the yellow book, the beige book, which was was lessons in teaching for women. And there was the blue book, I believe it's called the game for a lifetime, which was considered more for advanced players. That one was actually completed after he passed away. That was completed in late 95 early 96, except he passed away April 2nd, 95. All four great books, but his books are not formatted like most golf books. In other words, there's not a putting section, a chipping section, a different spread out all through the book. As an instructor, that made it hard to really find things that you wanted to, you know, if there was a specific thing you wanted to talk about or something you remember reading, it was really hard to find. So I put that book together actually for myself back probably in the late late 90s, early 2000s, just went through all four of the books and kind of just laid out each, each thing by as a student told me, it's kind of cliff notes of party's books, just laid them out a little more in the format.

24:52And then we used it as a training manual for new instructors, new instructor would come in who didn't really have a say you were coming to teach with us. Got a good swing. You can come teach with us needed to learn a little more about Harvey will be give you that and fall for a party's books. So you could use it as a study guide. Well, when I took over the academy, I decided I was going to cut it down and make a little shorter version. I'm like, nah, I'll just give it to the students like it is. It's only about 30 pages or so. A fairly concise. I'm like, I'll let the students have it. They can they can read it and use whatever resources in there. If they want to really research it great. They can really take the books and really read to it. They want to just read it as information. It'll really remind them of what they learned while they were at the academy. So it's just that it's just a resource for learning and instruction. I still use it. I hear from other instructors who have been at the academy and they say they say they still use it. So that's good. That makes me feel good. They've helped people learn a little more about this game.

25:56I love the fact that you put references in it. So it can take you directly to the page section from Harvey's book. Let's go. Right. And to me, this was. I love that you put Harvey believed that bullet point, bullet point, bullet point, bullet point. And you open with with the basics that nine out of 10 problems with the swing begin with the grip or the stance. Let's start with the grip. Yes. And the problems that everyone's blaming on lifting their head on there's so many things that people blame new on says that people will blame on a bad shot. Not about their game. They blame bad shots. But you're saying start with your grip. You know, I don't think there's there's very, very small minority of golfers that have ever come through the academy that we haven't changed their grip in some way.

26:59For most, for most average golfers pretty dramatically sometimes. I had a gentleman in the academy this weekend, 71 year old gentleman, and that was the he needed a little bit just a little bit of change in his left hand grip. Really, the reason for that is that, especially we'll start with, we'll speak as right handed golfers with your left hand on the club. There really is a position that left hand should be in for every person. Now, maybe slightly different. And it really relates to how your arm hangs. It's way hard to talk about your arm hangs at a certain angle. Just let your arm. We have all students do this. Just let your arm hang at your side in its normal position. Whatever position that hand is in at that time, we need to learn how to place our hand on the club that way. Are we always use that word? We don't grip it. We don't hold it. We place our hand on the club. So we place it right there. And really what we're trying to do is make sure we get our wrist and the pad of our hand up on top of the club so you can support it. We hear a lot of times. You hear the terms of week grip or a strong grip. Right.

28:03So it's got a week grip or stronger. That's really just talking about what kind of leverage control you have over the club. And I show that to students. I'll have them hold the club up. And if they turn their hand just slightly underneath a little bit and hold the club up, it'll feel real heavy. If they get their hand more up on top of the club, all of a sudden, they're like, oh, wow, that feels like I can use that. Well, yeah, that's called that's what it feels stronger has nothing to do. If I hit it left, I hit it right. I hook it up. So I said that doesn't that's you can do either one. But it's just about control. Once you have control of it with your left hand, then we're just trying to place the right hand on there. And it's in a natural position that goes with that. And as most people have heard, we've heard about the bees formed by the thumb and the left hand. Of course, the right shoulder. Most people, they just generally point there. We're not trying to point them there. That's just where they point when you place your hand on the club properly. It's it's not a you just you just do it. We talked about you'll hear instructors talk in hard to talk about to about seeing two or three knuckles on the back of your left hand. That makes you go stronger grip. Harvey said he didn't like to see people being knuckle counters.

29:04You know, I'm just staring at the back of their hand, which is true because you know trying to look down see all of them. Yes, the all four, you know, they're all they're all there. It's more about just getting that that placement on so we spend a lot of time with that for some students. That's can be miraculous. It really can they they can all the sudden. They can also control the club. They can they can swing it with a little bit of authority. They can get both some distance and some accuracy out of what they're trying to especially ladies, especially ladies. If if a lady has a poor grip, they really almost can't swing the club within the speech. 99% of the ladies just don't have the hand in arm strength that the average man does so they can't generate that type of that type of force. They're swaying in the rhythm of their swing, well, I found this much better than a lot of guys, but just the strength to it is not what it should be. So that's where we have to begin and getting everybody to get more come plan. Initially that's that feels if if you've done for a while, the wrong line. If you if you'll if you'll remember the little clinic idea for you guys, I didn't change any of your grips. I know saw a couple that just because in that timeframe with y'all going out to play, it probably would not have been beneficial at all.

30:15It would have just given you a a thing to think about that would have been too much. Yeah, and doing a clinic right before a round of golf was probably not a great idea. But timing as it was, I can tell you though that every one of us walked away with at least one nugget that we commented on during our round going, boy, this really is making a difference. Well, I'm very glad thank you for that. I'm glad to hear that. That's all. You know, it's it's. Yeah, you're right in a in a in a golf lesson. Well, just an example, I told you I had a gentleman this weekend I was working with and it was just it was just the two of us. I waited till it was either late on the first day to early than second day before I changed his grip. Just because it was okay. And he had some other problems like posture and set up that were not nearly as good. Usually in an academy, we don't wait that long. We do it first morning, get it out of the way. Let's let's as we always say if we if you get real comfortable with your grip on the first day and you don't really learn anything else.

31:17You had a good day. If you learned a bunch of stuff and your grip still does messed up, you're going to you're going to struggle. You're going to really struggle to accomplish anything. So I found this to be a very powerful line without a doubt. The stronger grip is better for the average golfer few golfers are strong enough for dedicated enough to play with their v's pointed to their noses. However, if the balls flying well, there's no need to change the grip. A strong grip can be overdone, but I think it's really fascinating because I just went to a strong grip in last last few months. Right. End of last year. And all of a sudden for the first time in my golfing life, I'm hitting a draw consistently. You see that right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's because the instructor I was working with that day put me on a stronger grip. I brought my right hand down rotated it underneath a little bit. But I know there's times where I'm feeling like I've gone too far.

32:19So what is the proper placement for a strong grip? Where's the proper placement for your hand? You're right hand. Right. Well, it's hard to say exactly because it can vary. And you can generally speaking, you want your you want the lifeline. Lifeline, that's that one right there. It's Harvey said the lifelong God put the lifeline into your palm of your right hand because that's where your left thumb goes in a good grip. For God was looking out for us when you did that. Because that's right where they go together. Most people don't get that that thumb and hand and really connected where it's supposed to be. So get their right hand and twist it over on top a little bit too far. It's probably where you had yours. And so it needs to slide and fit just a little more in there. So when that's so really so the left hand can control the right hand a little bit more. That's the problem a lot of times with us right handed golfers. If the left hand gets weak, the right hand takes over. That doesn't mean we're going to hook it. It just means it's going to maybe may throw the plug outside and may do it may do other things.

33:22It's very hard. Unless you're unless you're grip is a little bit strong to get the club working from the inside coming down through. So it's really where where that's so important that we get that grip on there. But yeah, can you know where you see people get it stronger is especially people who interlock their fingers together when they interlock them. They'll really go into deep and really drive that hand in there. And now they're working that hand too far underneath. So they really shouldn't be locked together. They should be laced a little bit together. That's one of the three grips that can be done really and properly sometimes they really jam those fingers together. And now my right hand is gone underneath the club. Kind of almost like they're like a motorcycle. Revenant underneath it. Instead of just placing it right against them. Ben Hogan even said this is his grip tended to get a little bit weak early later in his life, especially. But he said the most important part of the grip he felt like was was right there that knuckle of his right hand. And it was right behind the club. So he felt like it was right behind and supported it. So he went to hit it. He felt like it was just there's my palm nice and flat.

34:29There's the club base. I can control the club. But most people believe it or not, most people once they're left, even those who have a fairly weak grip with their left hand. Most people their right hand, if they're naturally right handed will be pretty close. They don't get OK with that. It just needs sometimes it will start to move and get too strong when the left hand moves and then it'll turn it under under a little bit farther. Where you see a lot of problems to with the right hand is is they'll take their right thumb and kind of wrap it around the club. Instead of having the thumb either set right on top of the club the grip or a little off to the side. You don't want a big gap. You don't want to make a big gap between your thumb and or finger right there and reach around or it makes the hand really weak. You're just grabbing hold of it with your fingers. You would pull the pencil that way. You wouldn't you wouldn't cast a fish and pull that way. You would put your thumb right on top so you could control where same thing with the golf group. You've got to hold it right there. You don't wrap your thumb around like that.

35:29For everybody listening to the audio version of this podcast, I would highly advise you to go to golf smarter TV so you can see exactly what Jim is talking about. Can you go that scene with? Yeah, you know, he's showing I'm looking at it. I'm watching and it's making total sense to me. So if you're a little baffled by it, we will have this interview posted up on golf smarter TV so you can watch it from start to finish. So we go from grip to stance to alignment. There's just, you know, I guess that's the the PGA right position grip and alignment. And I don't know how we can talk about all this because I would love to go through this entire notebook of content with you. Tell me that we don't have time for that today. So tell me how long is the the academy that you that you conduct. What can people sign up for? Oh, okay. Usually two or three days. I got to where we schedule mostly Friday Saturday Sundays usually just because that's most convenient to to where most people can do.

36:35So but mostly Friday Saturday's Sundays, they can they can sign up really for any of those if they want to do only two days. A lot of people only do maybe Friday Saturday. They can even do the weekend if they if they want to do that. Pretty much a full day program each one will start eight o'clock each morning. Go to mid afternoon. It's another benefit of being at a great horse like Wolf Dancer if they want to go play a few holes after that. I encourage them to play as few as possible so they don't wear themselves out and not have any energy left for the rest of the rest of the school. First two days for like that, starting early in the morning, going to mid afternoon, usually done around lunchtime on the third day just because everybody's tired and want to eat either in their day and go click off afternoon or maybe they want to go home after that on the last day. Yeah, or go to the swimming pool over at the resource. There's a spa across the street. Yeah, yeah, there you go. I've had lots of students say I need a massage. Well, there they are.

37:37So what are we talking about? Like see you do a morning session. You have lunch. And if you're not going out to the golf course, you coming back for a couple more hours. Right. So it's like what eight hours of instruction a day. Oh, maybe a closer probably six, you know, that's a lot of instruction. A lot of instruction. We definitely one of the things we stress those students is we're going to pay. We're going to don't get it. All right. We're going to go at a good pace. We're going to keep you. If we see people hitting too many balls, it's they don't we'd say you don't get a quantity discount. But we in order to get everything done because we cover, you know, putting, chipping, pitching, bunker play, you know, full swing driver. We do a little bit everything plus on the third day is really when we go out on the golf course for a while. So do some on course instruction strategy. What do we do from this particular shot, fairway bunkers uneven lies, which is you probably noticed it will have to answer that's pretty much every lie.

38:37And even why? Yeah, I noticed that. Everywhere. But yeah, it's a full it's a full three day. I've yet to see anybody. I always offer it the after lunch on the third day offered everybody, you know, if you all want to go out and do some more, we'll do it and almost across the board. Everybody goes, that's that's that's plenty. Yeah, what about the follow up because I'm sure when people leave and this happens. I would think across the board on golf academies when you spend a couple days, you're walking away, either feeling phenomenal. Okay, I got it. My game is really going to change or your overwhelmed with the amount of information that you have and you don't know if you'll ever be able to do anything with it. And then you go home and you don't practice. You get back to your life and you're, you know, and you wait a week or two and you haven't had a chance to go out to the driving range because you're thinking, why do I need to go to the driving range? I just spent three days in a school. I got it and you go out there and just it's a it's gone. Right. It's all gone.

39:42How, how do you help that? What do you do about that to, you know, are I'm going with this? I do know exactly where you're going. And that is one of the, that is one of the challenges because there's really, there's really nothing we really can do. It is up to you. Yeah, and we stress that to people when they're there. First of all, we try to fight that overwhelmed thing when they're there. We want to make sure I tell all the students before they leave. I really want you to feel like that you really understand it and that you've got what you need to do and that we'll find that we've just repeated things over and over again more often than give anything anything new. But as Harvey said in the very, the very first chapter of the little red book, he said lessons are not to take the place of practice, but to make practice worthwhile. So I tell students, if you're not going to go practice, you're not going to get any better. It's not about you. I don't have a magic wand. There's no fairy dust. I sprinkle on you that makes you better. It will work just as well back in San Francisco does in Austin, Texas. If you practice, you've got to get out. We also work on tools to practice.

40:44You know, I was talking to the gentleman that was at the school this week. And he's still working as an older gentleman, but still working. Got busy schedule. I said, you know, a good thing for you to do. We're working on a better grip. We're working on a process of getting set up in a little better posture. It's like, go on the backyard for 10 or 15 minutes as lunches as dinners cooking, you know, and go out and just place your hands on that new club. Go through the procedure. Take you a nice smooth golf swing. You know, feeling nice and in balance. Do that for a few minutes. That's great practice. That's better practice than hitting 200 golf balls that you just whacking about the field. Yeah. Yeah. As the as the comedian Stephen Wright said, there's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot. There's a fine line between practicing and just whacking balls into a field like an idiot, not knowing what you're doing. And we've got to do that practice thing. And if you know how to practice, that's that's one of the things we really focus a lot on at the academy is, how do we practice? What can I do to practice?

41:45Because almost, almost everybody that comes to the academy will say, I'm busy. I don't get time to practice very much. You know, they're not. They're serious about golf, but they they're not like a pro that's going to go out and practice for two hours a day. Yeah, occasionally you get that. But so that's something you have to really keep in mind. I gave you one of the books that we give students the other book we give them is a small little notebook to take notes. Oh, great. And that's extremely important. We tell them I said, we want to see you. We know we know we're doing our job. And we're getting through to you when we see you over there, taking some notes about what you want. Because then you're going to take that home. You're going to you're going to get that. Sure. Sure. And say me kind of follow up. I mean, like if I were to call you and say, Hey, I'm, you know, I had it in class. It was feeling great. I've kind of lost it now. Can I send you something? Some video or something? Can I call you? What can I get some follow up with you? Absolutely. Any of those things. Okay. Email with the video that we use now. I do most of the video.

42:48We haven't talked about this, but you know, Harvey Pinnick was not a definitely not a tech guy. He didn't. He was he was gone before tech really took off on that. For that really took over. But he didn't he would. There's things about tech now that would really frustrate him is that he didn't like people video taping themselves and watching their own swing without knowledge of what they were looking at. Take a total. It's going to see something and change something. What you're going to do end up is you're going to end up trying to change results in our causes. You're going to see the result of the problem instead of knowing what the cause is. Sure. So he was he was very there's a story about Tom Kite when he was a kid, brought him back some pictures that been taken and any of a golf camp. Get the golf camp and take pictures of a swing and Harvey took them from the lock lock them in his desk and wouldn't have. Yeah, that's cool. That's great. We don't need to look at that. What are you looking at? So, but in this day and age with my phone, you know, here I phone. There's a great app that I use the video with. It's incredible. You know how clear it can be.

43:48And you have the ability to send the videos back. I'm going to sit down tomorrow and actually review the videos I did the gentleman that was here this weekend and write some notes in there about some things that he needs to keep in mind. So allow that. But it's also he could videotape himself and send it back to me. I encourage students to do that. That's always always neat to get another video. But phone calls, both calls, emails, any of that stuff is is wonderful. I don't I don't think I get enough of them. I would like to get more of that for my students to get a little more that. I can even tell me if you're struggling having a bad time, it's you're not going to hurt my feelings and call me and tell me you're struggling a little bit. It's that's part of it. I'm be glad to point you in the right direction where we can maybe as far as follow up. And I thought you were kind of going with this to we have lots of students that come back. Yeah, sometimes yearly, sometimes every two or three years. That's nice. They just come back. They just enjoy doing it. And it's amazing. A lot of times that second or third visit is when it really starts to click.

44:49When it really starts to they, oh, okay, now I'm now I thought I had it, but I just thought I had it. I didn't really have it. I really got said, you know, you probably told me that before, but now I really have it. So, so it's a that's really good. Yeah, I miss day and age of technology. It's pretty easy to stay in touch. If I can tease this just a touch, I've been having communications with some people who are developing a new product called live view golf that will allow. It's a little camera that they can set up. And if you put the camera behind you, you can have your phone or your iPad down in front of you while you're setting up and you'll be able to see your swing live. Yeah, they're developing this and it's a very exciting product and we're going to get them on the show. Well, I'm not exactly sure, but I know they're working on it. And once they have this that release to the public will be one of the first people to talk about it. I'm very excited about that. So how do people get in touch with you? So they can come down to Wolfdancer and go to the higher agency and hang out for a long weekend and bring the family so they can be.

45:58They can be distracted while you're taking your golf school. That's right. It's been spent all day at the spa while. Yeah, play with the animals. Go for bike ride. It's such a huge property to you. You'd really never have to leave the property. Although Austin is so much fun. You don't have to leave the property. You can spend an entire weekend at the higher agency lost pines. Absolutely can. Yeah, best way to get a hold of me is the website, Harvey Pinnick, Golf Academy, dot com. Just all spelled out. And then it's got my phone number on there. You want to get a phone number? If you like, go ahead. That's the best one, which is 512-547-8106. And just leave a message or someone will answer the phone and we'll set it up. We've got school scheduled. I think it's on the website. I just did it recently through June. I think, but the academies will go on all year. Yeah, I just. Well, that's another beautiful thing about Austin is you got 12 month of your golf. We can do them. You know, I don't I we this February would have been absolute greatest time. I should have had 50 students. All February because the weather has just been perfect every weekend, which is unusual.

47:08But it's usually it's usually this way more in April. Yeah, we get that. But now's the time. It's this is when we start to get busy April, May, June or really start to get a little warmer, but get some some great times down here. I'm going to join Austin Texas and beautiful high resort. I know that you can Google this obviously, but Pinnick is P is in Peter EN ICK. Right. Only one. Yeah. And it can be more panic. The family members actually say it both ways. Pinnick or Pinnick. I'm not even going there. So Jim Hopkins director of instruction at the Harvey Pinnick. Yeah, golf academy. Thanks so much for your generosity, your time and for coming on the show and best luck. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed spending the time with you and hope to see you again. Well, I did too. Thank you. And if you ever just want to go through that book page by page, I'm open for happy glove to talk to you about it.

48:11Thanks Jim. As much fun as it was and the fact that each of us walked away with at least one really valuable nugget. It's really not a great idea to take a lesson right before around no matter if you're in the Austin area or planning to go and Austin gets multiple thumbs up for golf food entertainment and overall vibe. Get in touch with Jim at Harvey Pinnick golf academy.com. Oh, I forgot to mention that we recorded this on Skype instead of blab this week and the video didn't work. So unfortunately, it's only audio this week, but my sense is much where you most most golf smarter listeners are doing the audio because they have other things to do. But still, you are a lot of people watching the videos and I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I really like to know more about you and what you like and don't like about this podcast content, the videos or website, you know, everything. So please, the survey that we have, it provides me with some very important information about what you want to hear more and less of.

49:21So if you could please go to golfsmarter.com right now, click on the survey icon to fill out our short multiple choice listener survey while you're there, you can watch more of our videos, listen to past episodes, check out our Facebook and Twitter feeds. It's really a we've created and I'm very proud of what we've done. Thank you, Paul. It's a one stop shop for all your golf smarter content. Lastly, follow at golf smarter on both Twitter and Blab for announcements for our next Blab recording so that you can join in that conversation. Now, you know, are you interested in taking Jim up on his offer to go over the Harvey Pennick cliff notes page by page? If so, send me a note by clicking on the hay Fred button at golfsmarter.com.