History of RotarySwing - Long Version

Take a deep dive into the development of the perfect golf swing that is safe for the body to prevent injury while producing serious power with the fewest moving parts biomechanically possible.

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Hey Chuck, how are you?

David, good.

How are you?

Awesome.

So one of the things that we were talking about is a lot of the Rotary Swing members sort of wanted to talk about the history of Rotary Swing and how you got started.

And although you've had a video that tells you a little bit, you mind going way back?

Well, you want to go all the way back to the beginning.

It's a long story.

I'm turning 44 next month in just a couple weeks.

I've been playing, this is 30 years now that I've been playing golf, and my first time ever playing golf was a little bit different than how most people played.

I went out on Christmas Day as a 14-year -old kid, and there was six inches of snow on the ground.

We had to use orange balls.

The ground was completely frozen.

I never played on green grass like the first three times I played golf.

And the pins were like literally frozen into the ground.

I literally didn't know for the first month that I played golf that the pins came out of the hole.

I just thought they were all stuck in there.

I didn't know any better.

But I immediately, I was totally hooked and became super, you know, just fell in love with the game immediately, even though it was playing on white stuff instead of green stuff.

What inspired you to go out and for the first time ever go play golf in the snow?

You know, my.

My childhood stuff was a little bit different.

I definitely didn't grow up at the country club with the silver spoon kind of thing.

It was pretty much the exact opposite of that.

And so my mom had me when she was really, really young.

I think my mom had me when she was 15.

And so she had to drop out of high school to help raise me.

And so my mom really, really struggled growing up.

And we didn't have.

Any money, I mean, at all.

Like we, we grew up in government housing, we were on welfare, we had food stamps and all of that stuff.

And my mom had a lot of, uh, guys in and out of her life as we were growing up.

And one of these guys who I never.

My dad left when I was two months old, so I didn't really have, like, a father figure growing up.

But this guy who I was trying to kind of bond with and attached to was super passionate about golf.

His brother was super passionate about golf, that's all they talked about all the time.

And I was, you know, I'd never played golf in my life, I'd never even thought about golf, didn't know anything about it.

And he finally asked me one day, he's like, Hey, would you know it's Christmas Day?

would you like to go play golf?

And so for me, I'm like, Wow, like, I get a chance to, you know, get to know this guy and to go and do something different.

And I don't know anything about golf, so why the heck not?

So?

I was super excited to go out and play, but it's definitely not the the country Club upbringing, for sure.

So let's talk a little bit about, uh, that, that metaphor for life and and Well, let's take a step back.

Before that, what made you get obsessed?

Was it magazines?

Was it videos?

I mean, you went from planes in the snow to it has now become your life.

Where was that pivot point where you knew that you became obsessed?

I have always been the kid who took apart all his toys.

I had to know how my toys worked.

I took apart my Nintendo.

I took apart my GI Joes.

I literally, I was like, man, how did these legs move like this?

And I was like, oh, there's little rubber bands in here.

And I'm like, I didn't ever put them back together, but I love taking them apart because I just love how to understanding how stuff works.

And so for me, because I've been like this my entire life, I drove my mom nuts.

And I took apart her TV.

I took apart her VCR when I was a kid.

Like, I just like, wow, you stick something in here and it starts playing stuff.

How does that work?

And so the golf swing for me, as most golfers become obsessed with the swing, it was an instant lifetime pursuit for me because the golf swing has really been one of those things that, in my opinion, has never really been solved per se.

It's been taught so many different ways.

Still to this day, it's taught so many different ways.

But you can go down so many different rabbit holes looking for answers.

I'm obsessive about that stuff.

I have to know how everything works and that's carried through.

Not from the time that I was just, you know, a kid taking apart my toys, but to this day now I just have bigger toys.

I take apart my cars and my gearboxes and engines, and I have to understand how stuff works.

And golf gave me that opportunity to have a passion that I was super in love with.

But also like, man, I want to understand how this stuff works, like, how do you hit a ball?

how does Jack Nicholas hit the ball that way?

And that's actually how I first got my real introduction to understanding a golf swing philosophy, if you will.

You know, when I was in my mom, my grandmother used to drop me off at the golf course.

It was $4 and 35 cents and you could play all day and shoes and shirts were optional.

That was my first golf course I started.

So in the summer, she would drop me off there and I would play 45 holes a day all day.

And when I was waiting for her to pick me up, I'd sit in the clubhouse and read every single back issue of golf magazine, golf digest, all, you know, it was piles and piles of magazines in the clubhouse.

And so I was just reading all this stuff.

And at first I had, no idea what I was reading or what it meant or, but I was trying to get better at golf.

I instantly knew like I had to conquer this game, even though it's a game you can't conquer.

But a cousin of mine had these golf my way tapes by Jack Nicklaus, the VHS tapes.

And since I had taken my VCR apart, I had to figure out how to put it back together and put this VCR tape in there.

And I wore that thing out.

I watched that Jack Nicklaus golf my way tapes so many times that it literally stopped working.

But I loved it because, you know, Jack Nicholas and he had his teacher, Jack Grout on there talking about how, how Jack swings.

And of course, at this time, you know, Jack is the greatest golfers of all time, if not the greatest golfer of all time.

And so if you're going to learn from somebody, it makes sense to learn from this guy.

And so I really started down that rabbit hole.

That was really the catalyst where having these VHS tapes and wearing them out and watching them over and over and over again, made it so that I then had to read.

every single golf book that I could ever get my hands on every single golf magazine.

And I obviously had subscriptions to all the golf magazines and I just couldn't wait to get the next one that each month.

And so I've been pretty much obsessed with the mechanics of the swing from the very first get go.

Tell me about your first golf lesson.

Oh boy.

Ah, my first golf lesson.

Well, I kind of, It was a little bit of a disappointment.

So growing up, we didn't have any money for golf lessons or anything like that, but I got decent enough.

I got to a two handicap by my senior year of high school, played golf my senior year for a high school team, and then was offered a golf scholarship.

And one of the things that.

coach at the college offered was, listen, you know, you obviously have potential, you can play, you know, you've got down to two handicapped working on it on your own, but I'm going to get you, you know, great instruction that's going to help you get to the next level.

You know, I was that kid who was out there because I was out there 45 holes a day.

I get there first thing in the morning, be there all day.

And so I was always imagining myself making a putt to win the Masters and hitting a tee shot on the 18th hole at Augusta.

You know, I have those dreams of playing at an elite level from a very young age.

And so my belief was that the thing holding me back was just getting great instruction.

I knew if I could just work with somebody who was a great instructor.

who could tell me what I was doing wrong because I did as best I could on my own, but I still, if I could just hire a coach that could just show me exactly what I needed to do, that I could play at the next level.

And so my first lesson was our coach brought.

I think there was eight or nine guys on our golf team and our coach brought in somebody who worked at a local golf store, you know, selling clubs and things like that.

He was a PGA professional and he, I think he fitted clubs and he basically came in and sit on the range in front of us all and said, okay, well, you know, you really want to strengthen your grip.

And you know, if you're slicing aim left and if you're hooking aim, right.

And, and that was the lesson.

I'm like, What, what that doesn't like?

Those are just like these weird band-aids.

And even back then I had this idea, like, listen, there's got to be like some sort of right and wrong in doing that stuff, right, like, but it wasn't.

It was just like, if you're doing this, you do this, and if you're doing that, then you do it this way.

And I'm like, So we all just kind of figured out our own, we dig it out of the dirt, as Hogan said, and and we all just kind of find our own way.

And I'm like, Oh, that's Okay.

I mean, I don't know.

He's a PGA professional and he's the first golf lesson per se that I've ever had.

And so we had a few more guys that our coach brought in like this.

And I later came to realize that our coach who had sold me on taking this golf scholarship, well, this guy couldn't break a hundred to save his life.

He owned a couple of TCBYs.

And the only reason he was our golf coach is he was the only one that would do it for 1500 bucks a semester.

So it was really just volunteer work for him.

He just loved golf, you know?

And that's how a lot of people get into golf and coaching and things like that.

And I was in an NCAA is a division two school.

And like, here's our golf coach making, he owns TCV wise and he doesn't know anything about golf.

And so he was doing the best he could, but he would just bring in these random people who he knew who fitted clubs or worked at a golf store or worked in the pro shop.

And we got all these random things.

After that, my first paying lesson, the first guy I ever hired and wrote a check to and said, all right, now we're done with this nonsense over here.

I'm going to go hire the real deal.

Was in Denver.

And this guy worked with a lot of LPGA players.

He was a well-known coach in Denver, famous guy in the magazines and all this stuff.

And he was expensive.

It was like 150 bucks.

And I think I was, I think I'd just gotten out of college and I was ready to like take that next step.

commit and spend the money and I didn't have the money to spend, but, but I wanted to hire like a real golf pro.

And so I hired this guy for a lesson and I still remember the whole thing to this day.

I was hitting the ball.

I would hit, I went to him and you know, they say, Hey, well, what's going on with your swing?

What can I do to help you?

I said, well, I said, sometimes I hit my pitching wedge 130 yards and sometimes I hit 160 yards and I have no idea why.

And he's like, okay.

And so he looks at my clubs and he watches me hit a couple of shots.

And, you know, I, I, just like I had said, I hit one pitching wedge, like 170 yards.

I just nuke this thing.

And then I hit another one and it was like 130 yards.

And I'm like, it's kind of hard to play golf when your pitching wedge is going 30, 40 yards, different distance.

And he's like, here's what you need to All you need to do is imagine that there's a table in front of you and you're just trying to hit it under that table.

That was my lesson.

That was the whole lesson for 150 bucks.

And obviously that didn't fix anything.

The problem was not only in my swing and how I was flipping my hands at the bottom that was changing the loft of the club, but also my clubs.

I was using regular flex graphite Callaway clubs that would, they were so soft that the club was just flipping all over the place at impact.

And here's this guy working with LPGA pros, making all this money on the tour and the whole lesson didn't look at my clubs.

Didn't do anything about the flipping at the bottom.

It was just imagine you're hitting it under a table.

And, and that was the first time where I realized that golf instruction for, you know, it was the first step in many lessons that I took later on that it was based on nonsense.

It's like feels and visualizations and, but for me, I don't work like that.

I want a scientific reason.

I want a black and white definitive answer.

This is what you're doing.

Here's what's causing it.

Here's how to fix it.

And I didn't get that.

And so that was the first lesson I ever took.

And I still to this day, it's been 20 something years, 25 years.

And I still have not forgotten that lesson.

Well, let me ask you a question because you were also really big into snowboarding back in college.

And in fact, if I recall, you were a pro.

Yeah, so I actually turned pro when I was 19.

I was a professional snowboard mountaineer for the North Face, Patagonia, K2 Snowboard.

I had a bunch of sponsors, but basically what I did is I was climbing these mountains all over the Northern Hemisphere, all of North America.

I went to Norway, Mexico, and was climbing these mountains and trying to be the first to climb and snowboard down them.

And in Colorado, we have 54 peaks.

Now it's 55, 56, when I count it, but 54 peaks over 14,000 feet.

And I was trying to be the first person ever to climb and snowboard down.

They'd already been skied down, but nobody had ever snowboarded down them.

And so as a 19 year old kid, I did like eight of them.

The first year that I moved to Colorado, the next thing I knew I had done 35 of them.

And and so snowboarding became snowboard, mountaineering, really, it was, you know, rock climbing and ice climbing.

And doing all these technical things was really a huge part of my life.

So I was also, while I was golfing, I was snowboarding and doing both, and The cool thing about snowboarding for me is that it taught me two really important things.

One, it taught me how to learn.

Anytime I would go and learn something snowboarding, if I was learning a new trick, there was a very systematic approach of how we learned everything.

It wasn't just like, oh, well.

Just imagine that you're, you know, if I'm going to go and throw myself off a cliff and I'm going to do a 540 inverted spin off of that cliff, just hope for the best or just imagine it.

Envision in your head.

If you just do this, you'll land.

I mean, this is life or death stuff that I was doing.

And so for me to just huck myself off a cliff and hope for the best and envision it, it didn't really make a lot of sense to me.

So we went through a really simple process.

We would start out and we would do things on a trampoline.

So if I was going to learn a trick.

I would literally start without a snowboard, without anything.

And we'd just be on a trampoline and we would do like the first half of that rotation.

So like if I was doing a 540 spin, like one and a half spins, I would start out and I would learn and tuck my shoulder and land on my back.

So we do a little half spin.

And once we had that technique down, we'd add to a 360 and then we'd go to a 540.

And then once I had that safely on a trampoline, we would go onto a foam pit where we would snowboard down this big thing, this big jump, and then land into a foam pit so that it was safe in case I hooked myself incorrectly.

I wouldn't die landing on snow and ice.

I landed on a nice soft foam pit.

Once we had it down on the foam pit, we would take it outside and we'd go to an airbag where you could do it off snow, but you would land on this nice cushy airbag, but the airbag would allow you to ride out of it if you landed it properly.

And then eventually I would go to the snow.

But this process to learn like a single trick, sometimes it would take a couple of days.

Sometimes it'd take a couple of weeks, depending on how complex it was.

But the thing that was cool about it, is that there was a systematic approach to it.

It wasn't just huck yourself off or envision hitting under a table and hope for the best.

And so I was very lucky to have that experience really early on in my life.

To learn.

Like, there's coaches out there who teach things in a way that's not only safe to learn, but it's very specific and systematic and process oriented.

So for me, that was one of the things that really had a huge impact on how I started thinking about learning the golf swing later on.

Well, you also, when you were doing that, if I recall, you had some serious injuries that made you rethink a lot of things.

I've broken a lot of bones, David.

I've broken a lot of bones.

I've had a lot of surgeries.

I've done a lot of different.

What other people would consider crazy things?

To me?

They're fun things.

But I mean, I'm a downhill mountain bike racer.

I've won a bunch of races, mountain biking and and dirt jumping and doing all these big tricks and flying in the air and hucking myself off of things.

But, um, very early on I started experiencing pain in my body, and it's actually it was way less.

From snowboarding.

Sometimes, I definitely hurt my back and my neck, snowboarding several times, but the thing that hurt my body the most was actually golf.

And that was one of the things that, like, I was in a bad car accident when I was 19.

I had a, I was stopped and a guy hit me doing 65 rear ended me doing 65 and pushed my car, you know, off the end of a guardrail and all this stuff.

And it was really, it was a big, big deal for me, but it really messed up my hip.

And so golf obviously is super important.

Your lower body, your hips are everything in the golf swing.

And so.

From that very moment, I always had issues with pain in my back, pain in my hips from the time that I was pretty young.

And then as I started playing golf, I could find that I could play golf for like a day and then need to take two or three days off, even when I'm in my early 20s, because my body would be so sore, I'd be so achy that I would just need to take days off to rest.

And it became, the snowboarding thing didn't bother my back as much.

As golf did, which was kind of crazy, I'm hucking myself off 30 and 40 foot cliffs and landing on ice and all the stuff.

But golf did all the damage to my, to my body.

It was aggravating my body more than anything else I was doing.

And so I started looking into trying to figure out how to address those issues with my golf swing, because if I didn't golf, I wasn't sore.

I could snowboard.

I could jump a bike.

I could hike all day.

I could ice climb.

I could rock climb.

And golf was the thing that was doing the most damage.

So yeah, early on, that had a huge influence on my coaching that I later received and pushing me down the road to injury prevention.

All this happens and you still decide you're going to go pro in golf and you move to Florida.

Yeah.

So after I graduated college and I played a little bit of amateur golf in Colorado, I'd taken the lesson with the Colorado golf pro.

And I was like, you know what?

I just need to go to a place where I can practice year round.

I can play 365 days a year.

I need to go where all of these top golf pros are.

The guys I'm seeing in the golf magazines, the guys I'm seeing on TV.

I want to have access to that.

And in golf, you kind of got a few options.

You've got California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida.

We ended up choosing Florida as our home base, and there's tons and tons of high-level golfers there.

The mini tours are full of super, super great golfers there, great ball strikers there, and tons of coaches.

And so I started flying back and forth from Colorado to Florida interviewing golf pros.

And I had one simple criteria because at this point I'd taken some lessons and I kind of was starting to form my own ideas about the swing.

I mean, I already, I started teaching when I was pretty young, but of course I didn't know what I was doing.

I was just teaching based on what I was trying to do in my own swing.

Right.

But I started looking for somebody who I felt could really help me get to that next level and turn pro.

And so my only criteria was before you give me a lesson and before I write you a check.

All I ask is you go play one round of golf with me.

And not a single person would do it.

Not a single golf pro would be willing to go out and play golf with me.

And I finally found one guy after interviewing a dozen different teaching pros.

And these are guys that are on TV all the time.

These are guys in the magazine.

None of them would play.

And so I found this one guy who was working under David Ledbetter.

and working with a bunch of tour pros that I later became to work with, Robert Gomez and Ernie Els and Trevor Elmom and all these big name guys.

And he's like, yeah, I'll go play with you.

And he went out and absolutely played lights out in a cold, windy day in Florida.

And I played my absolute best as well as I could play.

I shot even par and he shot a 68 and made it look as easy as pie.

And I said, this is my guy.

This guy can teach me something, you know?

And so having that experience of seeing somebody that can not only talk about the swing, but could actually do it was everything to me.

I've always been the believer that if you can't do simple math, you can't add, I'm not going to try to learn algebra from you.

If you can't do what you're asking me to do and demonstrate it to me, then you can't teach me what you're asking me to learn.

You have to be able to do it.

Experience is the most important thing in the world to me.

And that experience with him taught me another important thing because he was a phenomenal golfer.

We ended up doing a couple golf DVDs together back many, many years ago.

But I realized another important lesson is just because you can do it.

doesn't mean you can actually teach it.

So there's a mixture here of being able, in the ideal world, You find somebody who not only has the experience in proving track record that they can actually do what they're asking you to do, so they know that it works, but they also know how to explain it and articulate it in a way that's digestible and you can learn.

So tell me about your first pro tournament.

That was a little frustrating as well.

I think golf has got a lot of frustrations in it.

I certainly had a lot of frustrations early on, but my first pro tournament was in Orlando.

I was still working with the same coach and I went out and I've been preparing for this for a while and I was really excited about it.

It was a one day event.

And I went out and shot 72.

I had four birdies and four bogeys.

And I was pretty frustrated because had I just not made those four bogeys, I would have won a check.

I would have made some money.

But in these one day events, it's kind of like an all or nothing.

The first, the top three or four or five guys get paid and the rest, you know, we're all sent home packing.

I shot 72 and I called my coach right after that.

I said, man, you know, here's what happened.

You know, I shot this.

I'm walking him through my round.

And he's like, I asked him, you know, what do you think?

You know, I still was missing the ball out to the right.

That's always been kind of my miss.

And he said, you know, what do I need to do?

And he literally said to me, I still remember to say, he said, make fewer bogeys.

I'm trying.

What do you mean make fewer bogeys?

No kidding.

I, obviously I want to make fewer bogeys, but how, you know, why am I still missing these shots that we've been working on for eight hours a day?

I'm hitting ball.

I'm hitting, you know, six, 700 balls a day.

I'm practicing eight hours a day.

I've been practicing for months.

I still miss the exact same shots.

I miss the same way.

It's costing me these bogeys.

And you're telling me make fewer bogeys.

And I'm asking you to tell me how to make fewer bogeys if we need to fix my ball striking issues.

And, and that, that was.

Not the answer I was looking for because he just didn't have the answers.

He didn't know exactly how to fix my issues.

He could hit the ball great himself, but getting somebody else explaining it to them is completely different.

It's a completely different skill set.

And, you know, like the first lesson I ever gave in my life, I kind of got that first taste of trying to teach somebody.

but not really knowing how to teach.

My first golf lesson, I was 19 years old and I didn't know anything about golf.

I hadn't even taken a golf lesson yet.

All that happened was I was in between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college.

I'm getting ready to go off to college, and I'm doing the typical summer work, right?

I'm doing handyman work around the neighborhoods, and I was cleaning this lady's gutters.

I was up on her roof cleaning out all the leaves on her gutter, and she said, hey, I heard that you're a golfer.

Would you mind giving my husband a lesson?

I said, I'm not a golf instructor.

I'm just.

I'm a decent golfer, but I don't know how to teach.

And she's like, listen, here's the deal.

He had a stroke.

He lost the use of his right size, right arm.

And he hadn't left the house in like two years.

And this guy, his name was Don.

And he used to be the guy up there cleaning his gutters and taking care of his house.

And just a typical man.

And he now, after this stroke, this debilitating injury, it made him half a man.

He didn't want to go outside anymore.

He didn't want to do anything.

He used to be athletic.

He used to work out.

He used to go do things.

And now she just couldn't get him out of the house anymore.

And so I was like, first of all, I don't know how to give a golf lesson.

I sure as heck don't know how to give a golf lesson to a guy that's only got one arm that he can use and that has never played golf.

And she's like, well, listen, I'm paying you 12 bucks an hour to clean these gutters.

I'll give you 20 bucks an hour.

I said, I'll do it.

I'm in, of course, you know, I had to take it.

I'm a broke college, soon to be college kid.

So I said, you know what I said?

I told her up front, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'll do my best.

So I go out to the golf course, take Don out there and we do.

We hit a few balls in the range and then he wants to go and play, and Don doesn't really talk much either.

He had a speech impediment after after a stroke.

And and so We go out on the golf course to play like nine holes.

And I thought it was an absolute disaster.

He's topping shots.

He hits a couple of good ones, but it's random, right?

I'm like, I'm trying to do, I'm doing everything I can to try and help him hit the golf ball.

But again, I only know how to teach him based on how I swing.

And I swing with two arms, right?

I don't know how any other way.

But what was cool about that.

Is that he didn't say hardly anything the entire lesson?

The whole time we're out there on the course, he hardly said a thing.

And I'm like, he hates me, I don't blame him, I don't know what I'm doing.

And this is going to be a one and done kind of thing.

And so I take him home and, you know, say thanks.

I hope you had a good time.

He doesn't really say much, and I get a call later that night from Don's wife, and she's like, Don hasn't smiled this much in years.

And it actually still, kind of, still, kind of makes room a little emotional about it.

Because for this guy to literally go from having his life taken away from him from the stroke to all of a sudden being able to get outside again and wanting to go outside again.

And for golf to have an impact on his life positively, to be like, Yeah, I can still do stuff and I can be outside and I can do things that I enjoy.

It had a huge impact on me.

And then so after that, she's like, would you mind working with Don?

You know, two or three days a week?

And I'm like, of course, I'd love to, so that's how I literally got into my golf.

Instruction was teaching a stroke victim who only had the use of his left arm.

So, which obviously had a huge impact for everything I did later on in life.

But all these little things, they kind of all started adding up to your life.

Experiences on my injuries that work with with Don, with the stroke victim, my my lessons.

With all these coaches who didn't help me get any better and just said, make fewer bogeys, like, OK, no kidding.

They all had they were all just kind of leading me down the path to where I am today.

When you look at that, where was that dividing where you go from being a pro to being a teaching professional?

Yeah.

So after my time with Adrian was the instructor I was working with, I went to several other instructors after that because I was trying to find somebody who could tell me.

what to do.

Like, how do I do this?

I know, obviously, you know, in college, I was a two handicap before I went to college.

I was, you know, maybe two or maybe I got down to scratch in college.

And then after I turned pro, I couldn't break 82 days in a row.

And I was taking more lessons.

I was, that's when I really started taking lessons.

And I became so frustrated that I went from being able to shoot par.

On any course to not being able to break 80 and playing as a professional.

And it was all because I was taking lessons and the lessons were making me worse, and it was infuriating for me and it was costing me a fortune.

I didn't have any money, so for me, every lesson that I was taking was like a serious investment.

And so I really, really, really got frustrated.

But at the same point, while I was playing, even though I wasn't scoring as well as I could on every, I mean, I won several tournaments and I, you know, I played some tournaments and I was traveling around playing state opens and things like that.

And Monday qualifiers for the PGA tour, but I started picking up students because of the guys that I played with, because they would see me hit the ball.

They liked my swing.

And they said, dude, I, I want to hit the ball like that.

So I started picking up a lot of other pro students.

So my, I went from Don, having only use of one arm, to, you know, very quickly.

Thereafter.

Most all of my students were tour pros, which was really straight.

It's not a normal pathway to golf instruction.

But it just happened to be that.

They were like, Dude, I like the way you're hitting the ball, I want to hit it like that.

Tell me more, tell me what you're doing.

And again, because I, even while I was working with these other instructors, I was reading every golf book under the sun, buying every golf DVD, constantly tinkering with my swing.

I'm in a lifetime tinkerer.

I'm always in front of a mirror working on stuff, trying to understand how stuff works.

And so I could explain the swing the way that I understood it.

And I was actually seeing better results with my students than I could with myself because I was still being taught by somebody else.

So I kind of got to this point where I had this little teaching practice going and this playing career.

And I was like, you kind of have to make a decision of going one way or the other.

And I got to the point where with my own playing career that I was just like, you know what?

After all of these guys that I've worked with, and I'm working with guys who are teaching major championship winners, you know, guys who are on TV beating Tiger Woods head-to-head in an event and getting just the most nonsensical teaching advice.

Like, oh, well, just imagine that you're moving a two-by-four back with your belly button.

What?

Like, that's the lessons that I'm spending all this money on.

Like, it's not making any difference.

I'm not getting any better.

I finally just came to the conclusion, wrong, right, or indifferent.

I don't think any of these guys know what the heck they're talking about.

And I just am wasting time.

I'm wasting money.

I'm a worse off golfer than when I started.

And I'm just going to start from scratch.

And I'm going to figure this stuff out my own way.

I'm going to not take any more lessons.

I'm going to do it.

What I think I need to do in the swing and the stuff that I'm working on with my students, these guys who are playing professionally and the benefit, the stuff that I'm seeing working for them.

And I'm going to keep working on my own swing.

And so I finally made that cutoff, right?

You know what?

I'm going to start teaching.

I'm going to teach myself.

And I'm going to teach my tour pros and decide that I'm going to figure out my own way of doing this.

I'm going to start with a blank slate.

I'm going to start from scratch and say, I don't care what any book that's ever been written about the golf swing says.

I don't care what anything in the magazines that I've been reading for the last decade say.

I'm going to start from scratch and say, what is the body designed to do?

What can it do?

Because again, during this whole time, my body is just a wreck.

And the more lessons I took and every lesson I took after.

After that lesson, my hip was really hurting.

Like, oh, yeah, you know, it's just part of the game.

I'm like, really?

Like, and I don't know, you know, how do you know any better at this point?

You know, I'm in my late 20s, and I'm still taking these lessons from these guys who are teaching guys on the tour making millions of dollars, and they're telling me that pain is just part of the game.

And I'm like, wow, this is really tough.

Like, I can go huck myself off a 30-foot corner of snowboarding, and that doesn't hurt.

But hitting a ball with a stick, that hurts like hell.

And I just said, there's no way.

And the final straw for me with that was, I think I was at maybe 30 years old, 31 years old.

And I, my hip was bothering me so bad.

And all of these coaches I had gone to didn't have an answer for it.

They had no idea what was causing it or, and they didn't even try to address it.

And I went to an orthopedic surgeon like, man, maybe there's just something mechanically wrong.

Maybe, you know, something's in there that I just don't understand or don't know.

And this guy, orthopedic surgeon in Orlando said, yeah.

You've got no cartilage left in your left hip basically.

And you're probably gonna need a hip replacement soon.

Oh, wow.

And I was like, dude, there's no way you're cutting my freaking femur in half.

I'm a kid.

I'm 30 years old.

And you're talking about replacing my hip already.

And it only hurts when I play golf.

There's no freaking way.

There has to be something that I'm doing in my golf swing that's causing this pain.

And that really became a huge.

Catalyst for me because I'm like, I'm not letting anybody cut my femur in half.

I've already had enough surgeries by this point and had five more shortly thereafter.

But that really became kind of the foundation.

Because I had had so much pain for so long, and since I was 19, of having all this hip pain and back pain from my golf swing.

I'm like, there has to be a better way to do this, there has to be.

So.

From there, you actually had an opportunity to work in some performance labs, didn't you?

And really test some of these theories?

Yeah.

So as I became more enamored with getting out of pain, pain is an amazing motivator.

So I'm like, dude, I love golf.

Obviously I want to play for their lifetime.

I still wanted to play professionally full time and win on the tour and all of those dreams that you have as a kid golfer.

But I really had to figure out how I could play and not be in pain every day.

Yeah, you can't practice, you can't play.

And so the first really big opportunity for that came with a guy named Dr.

Jeff Broker, and he was a P.

h.

D.

biomechanist from the U.

S.

olympics committee and he had seen a bunch of stuff that i'd published on my website.

My website's been up since 2005.

We were the first golf instruction membership site on the net.

And so I was publishing a lot of my ideas and I started picking up a lot more students and a lot more tour pros who liked what I had to say.

And so Dr.

Broker had also seen a lot of the stuff that I'd published on there.

And he was doing a ton of research at the University of Colorado.

He was asking me like about some of my ideas and he's like, I would really love to sit down with you sometime.

And I was also the teaching pro at Castle Pines Golf Club.

And so, which was just, you know, 45 minutes away from where he was based at.

So we started doing a lot of work together.

He was coming out to Florida.

We did a really, a ton of really cool research on grip pressure and hip feet using.

Pressure plates using understanding weight, shift and and dynamic ground forces and all these things.

And so he was like me, he was an inveterate inverter tinker he ought.

He wanted to understand how everything worked and realized that the stuff that was being taught pretty commonly in the golf industry of.

Just imagine you're hitting it under a table, and if you're aiming, you know, if you're hitting it right, aim, left and that kind of nonsense.

He's like, Dude, this doesn't make any sense, and the cool thing about him was that his background in the Olympics Committee, he worked with the best athletes in the world.

He was training Lance Armstrong when Lance Armstrong was dominating everything, and all these top -level performing athletes at the U.

S.

Olympics Committee, he was working with them, and everything they did was completely objective.

There was no gray area.

It was not like, oh, well, my personal preference is that you kind of do this.

Or if you have this issue, maybe try that.

It was like, no, no, no.

Here's the biomechanical research.

Here, we're going to go put you in the lab.

We're going to put you on force plates.

We're going to look at this thing objectively.

And here's the most efficient way to do it.

Here's the safest way to do it.

Here's the biomechanical issues that you're going to run into.

Here's the anatomical issues you're going to run into.

And so he took that same, you know, very staunch black and white scientific approach that he had at the U.

S.

Olympics Committee.

to his research he was doing in the golf swing because he was teaching 1000 a golf course at the University of 1001 Colorado.

And so he and I hit it off 1002 instantly.

I'm like.

yes, this is my guy.

1003 I want to dig down with you and start 1004 really looking at, I want to, you know, 1005 you obviously like my ideas about the 1006 swing and the direction that I'm heading, 1007 but now I can get your input on this and 1008 look at it completely objectively in 1009 black and white.

And so working with guys 1010 like Dr.

Broker were huge.

I also worked 1011 at the TaylorMade Performance Lab because 1012 they had, they bought the system called 1013 matte technology.

And basically it was 1014 these nine infrared cameras that could 1015 measure the swing in real time in 3d and 1016 measure everything to like.

A tenth of a 1017 degree.

And they had all this Tour Pro 1018 data and they could look at everything 1019 completely objectively.

And we could see 1020 not what we thought people were doing, 1021 but in real time, frame by frame, exactly 1022 what the body's actually doing and what 1023 was leading to injury and all of those 1024 things.

And that led to a medical panel 1025 we had Dr.

Brian McKeon We had all these 1026 medical panel experts who came in and 1027 started providing their expertise on 1028 injury prevention.

Because obviously it 1029 was still a huge deal to me.

And so we 1030 had, you know, we have all these 1031 neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons who 1032 came in and said, yes, these ideas that 1033 you're talking about, this is what will 1034 lead to injury.

This is what doesn't.

And 1035 one of the biggest things we ever did is 1036 sitting down and asking those guys, 1037 what's the number one surgery, golf swing 1038 related injury surgery that you guys do?

1039 And for me, I had always had hip and back 1040 problems.

And so I had my own personal 1041 bias.

I'm like, oh, I bet the number one 1042 injury that these guys have is.

going to 1043 be related to the hip and back.

And 1044 that's what most people think of when 1045 they think of golf is some sort of golf 1046 back and hip injury.

But the reality is 1047 all of them, all of these orthopedic 1048 surgeons said it's lead shoulder 1049 impingement.

And at the time I had no 1050 idea what that even meant.

1051 But it became clear as we started looking 1052 at things from an anatomical perspective 1053 and looking at what the body can and 1054 can't do safely.

And what type of 1055 movements lead to these impingement 1056 issues and all of these other injuries 1057 that we looked at, it became clear to me 1058 that this was the only way to teach the 1059 golf swing is that if it's doing 1060 something that's going to cause you to 1061 get injured, I don't care.

I don't care 1062 if it's going to be a way to hit the ball 1063 20 yards further.

You can't do it 1064 forever.

That's what matters.

Golf is a 1065 game for a lifetime.

And if you're doing 1066 things that are getting you injured, then 1067 you can't play golf for a lifetime.

A lot 1068 of people were discussing on our Facebook 1069 group really recently has been coming up 1070 quite a bit actually about Freddie 1071 couples.

1072 Freddie Couples is an awesome golfer, 1073 obviously he's one of the masters.

He's 1074 been one of the most desired swings on 1075 the tour because he's got this beautiful 1076 tempo, this great rhythm to his swing.

It 1077 looks like Fred Astaire hitting a golf 1078 ball, you know?

But Freddie Couples has 1079 had back injuries his entire career.

And 1080 now I think he, I think he's 60 now.

But 1081 a couple years ago, there was an article 1082 in Golf Digest.

He was 58 years old and 1083 basically said, I can't play golf 1084 anymore.

Just, It's not worth it.

It 1085 hurts my back so much I don't play 1086 anymore.

Here's a guy who's a major 1087 champion, won tons of tournaments on the 1088 tour, millions of dollars.

And at 58 1089 years old, he can't play golf anymore.

1090 Yet so many people still look at his 1091 swing as a model.

And that's the problem 1092 with golf instruction is we don't look at 1093 the swing, or at least most people don't 1094 look at the swing inside out and 1095 objectively.

They say, well, he's a great 1096 ball striker, so we should just copy him.

1097 If, you know, Tiger Woods became that 1098 model.

Tiger Woods is the best of the 1099 best.

We should just copy him.

Look at 1100 Tiger's back now.

I mean, all of these 1101 things, they all come with a price.

And 1102 unless you start looking at the swing 1103 black and white, objectively looking at 1104 what prevents injury, what causes injury, 1105 then to me, that golf instruction is 1106 worthless because if it leads to injury 1107 first, there's no point.

It sounds to me 1108 like the pain that you've gone through 1109 and went through almost became your 1110 purpose.

1111 It kind of did.

And obviously I had a 1112 really, really big whoopsie in 2011.

I 1113 broke my neck.

I had a C1 burst fracture, 1114 which is a really, really bad idea.

1115 Very few people survive that.

And then 1116 those that do are typically on a 1117 ventilator or paralyzed.

And I see one's 1118 your top vertebrae.

I was mountain 1119 biking.

I was jumping off a big jump, a 1120 20 foot jump.

And I came up short and my 1121 bike went into the.

This wooden and steel 1122 ramp that I was landing on and I flew 1123 over the handlebars and landed on top of 1124 my head.

And so I broke C1 like an 1125 explosion.

It's called a burst fraction.

1126 I broke it in five places, three places 1127 in the back and two in the front, and 1128 that led to a bunch of surgeries.

I had 1129 four cervical surgeries, I broke my hand, 1130 I had nerve damage, I had all kinds of 1131 stuff.

1132 But the thing about it, as bad as that 1133 was for me, and I spent 11 days in the 1134 neuro ICU, and that's not a place you 1135 want to hang out.

The mortality rate 1136 after three days in the neuro ICU goes up 1137 exponentially.

And I was there for 11.

I 1138 mean, I bled out twice on the operating 1139 table.

I had a blood clot that nearly 1140 killed me and all this horrible stuff.

1141 But after that, as bad as that experience 1142 was, it completely changed every single 1143 aspect of my life in a good way.

Not just 1144 the stuff that I was doing, but from my 1145 golf instruction, obviously, I've had an 1146 impact on millions and millions of 1147 golfers who've seen my videos.

But 1148 they've seen that that passion comes from 1149 experience.

You know, if you go through 1150 something like that and it doesn't change 1151 your life, there's something crazy wrong 1152 with you.

So for me, after those first 1153 two surgeries, 1154 I wanted to get back out and play golf, 1155 but I had been on a couch for six months 1156 in a neck collar.

Couldn't move.

Just 1157 watching Netflix all day.

So my muscles 1158 completely atrophied.

I went from 178 1159 pounds to 138 pounds.

Oh my gosh.

I had 1160 no muscle.

I couldn't walk.

I sure as 1161 heck couldn't play a golf club.

Wasn't 1162 allowed to play golf.

I wasn't allowed to 1163 drive for six months.

And it was a 1164 really, really messed up deal.

Not to 1165 mention the horror that my wife had to go 1166 through watching me choke.

You know, as 1167 you break this, you can't swallow.

So I 1168 had to swallow all these pills every 1169 single day and I would choke on them 1170 every single day.

My wife just had to sit 1171 there and watch me choke.

And I'd be 1172 like, no, no, just give me a second.

It's 1173 going to go down in a second.

1174 But it had such a huge impact on every 1175 single part of my life, but probably 1176 nothing bigger than the way that I taught 1177 the golf swing.

Because as a result of my 1178 neck fusing over all of this, over the 1179 injury, I developed scoliosis as a result 1180 of this.

And so now my spine is pretty 1181 severely curved.

And so.

1182 Obviously, when you have scoliosis and 1183 just gravity working on your spine every 1184 single day and being fused, I'm fused at 1185 C1, 2, and 3 now, 1186 that other discs in your spine start 1187 taking up the load because other stuff is 1188 fused together, right?

So for me, to be 1189 able to come back and play golf at all 1190 was pretty much a miracle.

And if it 1191 wasn't for the stuff that I was doing 1192 with rotary swing and trying to figure 1193 out.

And having such a huge slant towards 1194 injury prevention and swinging a safe and 1195 powerful way.

Without all the 1196 biomechanical research with Broker and 1197 all these other orthopedic and 1198 neurosurgeons, I would have never been 1199 able to play golf.

There's no way that I 1200 could have ever come back and played.

But 1201 not only was I able to come back and play 1202 and get back to a plus handicap, but I 1203 still hit the ball as well or as far as I 1204 ever have.

And I do it pain-free and I 1205 can hit balls all day long.

and have no 1206 fatigue, no pain.

And that's purely a 1207 result of this.

So going through that was 1208 really, really bad.

I don't want to do it 1209 again, for sure.

But I can now play golf 1210 and I wouldn't have never taken that deep 1211 of a look at the spine.

And the 1212 neurosurgeon who did all the surgeries, 1213 he and I became really, really close 1214 friends because somebody's cutting into 1215 your spine and looking at your spinal 1216 cord every day, you become pretty close 1217 buddies.

But I had.

Access to him all 1218 the time.

And I just grilled him on my 1219 spine because not only did I want to 1220 heal, but I saw this as like, well, if I 1221 can understand, if I'm what I'm going 1222 through, I can understand what's really 1223 going on in my spine.

In the golf swing, 1224 I can understand how to get back and be 1225 able to play golf, and then I can 1226 understand how to teach others who have 1227 gone through this stuff.

And I've taught 1228 hundreds and hundreds of golfers now 1229 who've had, you know, all types of little 1230 spinal fusions and things.

And I've been 1231 able to understand exactly what they're 1232 going through and how to work around 1233 those issues.

1234 So how did that inspire you to write your 1235 first book?

So the first book I wrote in 1236 2007, and that was luckily before I broke 1237 my neck.

But by this time, I was already 1238 having a lot of back and hip problems.

I 1239 mean, I was having back and hip problems 1240 when I was 19.

So that stuff in the first 1241 book was all about coming back to a way 1242 to learn to swing the club.

That was 1243 simple and that made sense because all 1244 the instruction that I was receiving at 1245 this point.

1246 Didn't make any sense to me.

I've always 1247 had two questions about the golf swing.

1248 When somebody tells me something during a 1249 golf lesson or just print something in a 1250 magazine or says it on TV.

First, why?

1251 And second, how?

First of all, tell me 1252 exactly why you want me to do that.

Tell 1253 me how that's going to affect what's 1254 going on in my swing.

And then tell me 1255 exactly how you want my body to do it.

1256 And if you can't answer those two 1257 questions, then I'm not going to listen 1258 to you anymore.

You have to be able to 1259 explain to me why you want me to do 1260 something.

And I think, again, this goes 1261 back to me taking my GI Joes apart.

1262 Like, why do these legs work this way?

1263 How does it work?

And how do I put them 1264 back together?

Not that I really cared 1265 about putting them back together.

But 1266 with the golf swing, that book in 2007 1267 was all about making something really 1268 simple.

I want people to play golf.

I was 1269 so frustrated and so confused because 1270 every teaching pro I went to would tell 1271 me something not only different than the 1272 other teaching pro.

but literally the 1273 exact opposite in most cases.

And then I 1274 would open a golf magazine and on one 1275 page, you'd have one instructor saying, 1276 oh, if you want to do this, do it this 1277 way.

And then literally on the very next 1278 page, this instructor would be saying 1279 literally the verbatim, the exact 1280 conflicting opposite.

And to me, that was 1281 insanity.

It's lunacy.

How can you have a 1282 magazine printing literally two 1283 completely conflicting things?

1284 One page apart.

And so when I wrote that 1285 book, I'm like, dude, let's get away from 1286 all this nonsense and just make the swing 1287 simple.

Here's what you really need to 1288 do.

Here's all it needs to be.

It doesn't 1289 need to be this complicated thing.

And so 1290 that book was really my first step in 1291 publishing my own ideas on how to make 1292 the swing understandable, how to make it 1293 simple.

1294 Rotary swing, simplifying the golf swing.

1295 That's what it was all about.

1296 That to me.

was stop struggling with your 1297 swing.

The rotary swing makes learning 1298 the game fast and simple.

That's what I 1299 cared about because I was so freaking 1300 frustrated with all of my experience that 1301 I'd gone through.

And the more lessons I 1302 gave and the more people I started 1303 talking to, I realized that there was 1304 this commonality that There are so many 1305 people with this exact same experience.

1306 They go to so-and-so instructor and he 1307 tells them one thing and they go to 1308 another instructor and he says the 1309 opposite.

And they're frustrated because 1310 they don't have the time to look into 1311 this and figure out who's right, who's 1312 wrong, or if there is a right and wrong.

1313 Whereas for me, this was my passion from 1314 the time I was a kid.

And so I was going 1315 to figure out a way to help all these 1316 people who had gone through the same 1317 experiences that I had gone through.

So 1318 what changed then from when you wrote 1319 that first book to you writing your 1320 second book?

So when I wrote the second 1321 book, that one was my other passion, and 1322 that was teaching teachers.

So this was 1323 the Rotary Swing Certification Manual, 1324 and it was called The Anatomy of the 1325 Swing.

And what was important about this 1326 was that I realized that there was 1327 something really missing in the golf 1328 industry as a whole, in my opinion, and 1329 that was people don't know how to teach.

1330 Being a golf pro.

And teaching at driving 1331 ranges and different golf clubs, you're 1332 around all these different people 1333 teaching different things.

And then all 1334 of the hundreds and then eventually 1335 thousands of students I had, I hear from 1336 their experiences of what they're being 1337 taught.

And I'm like, dude, that doesn't 1338 make any sense.

Why would your pro teach 1339 you this?

Why would he tell you that?

It 1340 doesn't make any sense.

So I started 1341 looking into how people learned how to 1342 teach.

And what I realized, like a lot of 1343 experiences were kind of similar to mine, 1344 that they just kind of get roped into it 1345 because they're a good player.

And 1346 somebody says, hey, will you help me with 1347 my swing?

Well, I didn't have any 1348 credentials that teaches a 19 year old 1349 kid.

I had no idea what I was doing.

1350 And so a lot of people kind of run 1351 through that same thing.

I thought, well, 1352 the PGA of America, this is their job, 1353 right?

They teach people how to teach 1354 golf.

And then I realized that's not 1355 really true either.

The PGA of America 1356 program, while it's a great program for 1357 teaching you how to run a golf business, 1358 the amount of teaching that they get.

to 1359 learn how to teach is minuscule because 1360 they have two years to teach you how to 1361 run a multimillion dollar business.

1362 That's what a golf pro does.

He learns 1363 how to run a pro shop, how to run 1364 inventory, how to manage staff, how to 1365 manage the golf cart batteries and golf 1366 course agronomy.

I mean, that's in two 1367 years, you're learning how to run this 1368 multimillion dollar business and that's 1369 what you graduate with.

And you become an 1370 assistant pro working 16 hours a day, 1371 making no money, 1372 sitting in the pro shop all day.

And you 1373 realize the worst truth about the golf 1374 industry, if you work in it, 1375 The more you work in it, the less you 1376 actually get to play golf.

You know, most 1377 people go into the golf industry because 1378 they love golf.

They want to play.

But 1379 when you actually go to work in the 1380 industry, you just end up behind a cash 1381 register in the pro shop all day.

And so 1382 people are desperate to get outside and 1383 be able to teach and play golf and help 1384 people.

Because that's what they got into 1385 the industry for and didn't realize 1386 that's not really what the job actually 1387 entails.

1388 So a lot of times these assistant pros 1389 take golf lessons because, you know, a 1390 starting golf lesson might be 40 bucks an 1391 hour.

Well, this guy working in the pro 1392 shop working 16 hours a day, all day, 1393 weekends, giving up his life to sit in a 1394 pro shop all day.

He's probably making 1395 effectively six bucks an hour.

So for 40 1396 bucks an hour to go give a golf lesson, 1397 even whether he's qualified or not, he's 1398 all over.

I get to get outside.

I get to 1399 make a lot more money.

1400 but I didn't really get much training in 1401 the golf industry.

I got really outdated 1402 information.

I mean, the PGA of America 1403 taught really outdated stuff for a long 1404 time, even though it was proven 1405 scientifically with TrackMan, for 1406 instance, a launch monitor, that the old 1407 ball flight laws were completely wrong 1408 and all these things, but they still 1409 taught that stuff.

They just didn't 1410 really update their teaching curriculum.

1411 So that was a huge issue for a lot of 1412 people understanding that they don't get 1413 trained how to teach.

And so when I wrote 1414 the second book, 1415 I realized that if I was going to help 1416 more golfers, it wasn't by, it was only 1417 so many lessons I can give.

And I used to 1418 spend 10 hours a day giving 10 lessons 1419 back to back all day in the hot Florida 1420 sun.

And that's working as hard as you 1421 can possibly work giving golf lessons, 1422 but I could still only work with 10 1423 people a day max.

But if I could teach 1424 other teachers how to learn how to help 1425 their students.

play better, play more 1426 consistently and prevent injury and swing 1427 properly and be more consistent and have 1428 more distance, have more fun.

That was 1429 the pathway that I wanted to go.

So I 1430 started flipping my ideas from how do I 1431 help the individual student to how do I 1432 help teaching pros help their students?

1433 And that's what the second book was 1434 really all about.

1435 Now you worked with, you know, by that, 1436 yes, doctors who worked with.

with the US 1437 Olympians and getting into the 1438 biomechanics there as well, didn't you?

1439 Yeah, for sure.

And that was a huge part 1440 of the foundation for writing that book 1441 was having some real scientific evidence.

1442 I really became obsessed with the 1443 TaylorMade Performance Lab.

Luckily, we 1444 had one in Orlando.

1445 And the guy that ran it there was a 1446 member of the site and was super, super 1447 cool and loved the work that I was doing 1448 on the swing and the research.

And he let 1449 me have full access to there.

I could go 1450 in there anytime I wanted and start.

1451 Travis Kent was the guy's name.

And he 1452 would allow me full access to lab and 1453 full access to all their tour pro data.

I 1454 could look at it.

exactly what all the 1455 top-level players were doing.

And then I 1456 could look at it, and I started 1457 extrapolating the data.

I could see what 1458 their hip speed was, their hand speed 1459 was, how fast their shoulders were 1460 moving, how fast their hands were moving.

1461 And then I could start looking at it and 1462 saying, okay, out of these people that 1463 have this level of rotational speed and 1464 whatever, look at what their performance 1465 is.

Because I obviously knew who these 1466 tour pros were, and I could see, oh, I 1467 know that that guy's got a really bad hip 1468 problem.

I know that guy's got a really 1469 bad back problem.

That guy's got a 1470 shoulder issue.

He's got a wrist issue.

1471 I could see what they were doing in their 1472 swings and now I could quantify it.

And 1473 so that gave me even more tools and ammo 1474 to say, not only can I see what I believe 1475 they're doing in video that's causing 1476 these injuries and causing their 1477 inconsistencies and so on, but I can 1478 actually quantify it with data and I can 1479 see real hard numbers to say, well, you 1480 move your hips like this at this time in 1481 the swing at this speed.

And here's six 1482 guys that are doing that.

And five of 1483 those six are injured.

And that's the 1484 thing that people don't realize is that.

1485 Most golf instruction is based on tour 1486 pros.

You see somebody on TV who's the 1487 hot stuff right now.

And if he's the guy 1488 that's playing better than anybody else, 1489 then that's the guy you copy right now.

1490 And that's been something I've been 1491 against for a long, long time.

But when I 1492 started out, I did the same thing.

I 1493 looked at Tiger Woods or Ernie Els or 1494 whoever, Jack Nicklaus.

It's how I 1495 learned how to play.

I looked at his 1496 swing and said, oh, well, that's how you 1497 swing because he's the best player.

1498 Because there's no right or wrong way in 1499 the golf swing as it's been commonly.

1500 Believed?

And so I could start to look at 1501 this stuff and say, well.

81 of the PGA 1502 Tour pros miss nine weeks for a golf 1503 swing related injury.

That's in.

Research 1504 from the National Golf Foundation has 1505 been published forever, but nobody reads 1506 this stuff.

This foundation, the National 1507 Golf Foundation, proved that the golf 1508 injury, the injury rate, is probably 1509 higher than the NFL rate.

How many guys?

1510 If you miss nine weeks in the NFL, you're 1511 out for the whole season, it's done.

1512 But golfers regularly are getting 1513 injured, and it's 81% on the PGA Tour.

So 1514 to me, The whole idea of looking at 1515 somebody who we know has a four out of 1516 five chance of getting injured.

And 1517 modeling your teaching model off of that 1518 is completely flawed.

You have to step 1519 outside and say, look, you can't use a 1520 flawed model that's going to lead to 1521 injury and inconsistency.

And use that as 1522 the way that you teach.

There has to be 1523 some more science to it.

And the 1524 TaylorMade Performance Lab, all of that 1525 stuff and the research with Dr.

Broker.

1526 And then I started, I'm a pretty 1527 obsessive guy, as you can tell.

So I 1528 started reading tons and tons of college 1529 textbooks on biomechanics and anatomy and 1530 physics.

And so I really became super 1531 obsessed with this stuff.

Sort of taking 1532 it apart.

What's that?

Sort of taking it 1533 apart.

Taking it apart.

I did have to 1534 learn how to put the golf swing back 1535 together.

But you got to take it apart 1536 first.

You got to have this exploded view 1537 of, okay.

1538 I like to look at things from like a 30 1539 ,000 foot view first and say, okay, what's 1540 the big picture?

What am I really trying 1541 to accomplish?

And then I can start 1542 putting the pieces together.

But I think 1543 so many people, we just, we are, we have 1544 view like this, right?

We just kind of 1545 only see what's right in front of our 1546 face and people don't take the time to 1547 step back.

And fortunately with golf, I 1548 made that decision only again, because I 1549 was so frustrated with my own teaching 1550 experience to say, you know what?

1551 I'm done with all this nonsense.

1552 I'm going to step back.

I'm going to take 1553 a 30,000 foot view.

I'm going to look 1554 down on it and say, all I'm trying to do 1555 is hit a ball with a stick.

And I want to 1556 do it pain free.

I want to do it 1557 consistently.

And I want to hit a ball a 1558 long ways.

I want to be powerful.

1559 What's the best way to do that?

And to 1560 me, the biomechanical research for that 1561 was everything.

1562 So then you wrote a third book.

1563 So the last book that I wrote, which is 1564 just published this year in 2009 or 2020, 1565 I guess it is already, was called The 1566 Dead Drill.

And so that's kind of coming 1567 full circle.

For me, as I started getting 1568 very, very technical about the swing, 1569 which was inevitable with all the 1570 research I was doing, I mean, I 1571 understand being, I look at the facet 1572 joints in the spine and I'm like getting 1573 down to the nitty gritty.

1574 That's really important for the 1575 instructor to know, to be able to help 1576 their students avoid injury.

But at the 1577 same point, the student doesn't need to 1578 know every single little biomechanical 1579 detail.

And so I wanted to take 1580 everything that I had learned, all of 1581 this complexity, and make it really 1582 simple and compress it down into the 1583 tiniest package that I possibly could.

1584 And that really was the culmination of 1585 what I called the dead drill, which 1586 stands for the drill to end all drills.

I 1587 wanted one drill.

And that was all you 1588 needed to do.

And if you just learned 1589 this one drill, it encompassed everything 1590 that you truly needed to learn about the 1591 golf swing.

You didn't need to do 15 1592 different drills.

I mean, over the years, 1593 I've developed dozens and dozens of 1594 different drills on how to fix certain 1595 issues in the swing.

I'm like, man, 1596 this is a take forever for somebody to go 1597 through every single little thing that 1598 I've spent my life studying.

1599 how can I take all of that and make it 1600 really, really simple?

And the 1601 culmination of that, the test bed for 1602 that was in 2018, I think it was, I went 1603 and did what we called the Rotary Spring 1604 Roadshow, where I left my home in 1605 Telluride, Colorado, and I drove across 1606 the country all the way down to Miami, 1607 Florida and back, and I gave free lessons 1608 to anybody that asked.

1609 So I went, I'd spent a fortune doing 1610 this, but what I wanted to do was take 1611 somebody who I'd never met before, A golf 1612 somebody had never given a golf lesson 1613 before.

And in 30 minutes or an hour, 1614 completely reinvent their golf swing.

And 1615 do it completely for free.

And do it 1616 incredibly fast, faster than anybody else 1617 had ever seen.

Because I had these ideas 1618 that I got the golf swing as.

Even though 1619 I understand it at a very deep level, 1620 what really matters is just a couple of 1621 things, just a few things.

And so I 1622 wanted to test these ideas out on a 1623 completely objective basis, people I had 1624 no experience with.

1625 And prove that I could get somebody to 1626 swing like a Tour pro, or better than the 1627 average Tour pro because of.

Avoid injury 1628 and do it in a single lesson.

1629 And the results I posted on YouTube.

I 1630 had no intention of filming the lessons 1631 at first.

It was kind of just a random 1632 thing.

I was like, you know what?

The 1633 first lesson I went to was in Denver.

1634 It's like, you know, I have my GoPro 1635 here.

I'll just set it up and see if he's 1636 cool with it and see if, uh, I don't 1637 think anybody was going to want to watch 1638 a golf lesson.

I really thought that 1639 would be pretty boring.

I was very 1640 surprised because I sure as heck would 1641 not watch anybody give a golf lesson.

1642 There's no way.

I don't even watch golf.

1643 I haven't watched golf in like 10 years.

1644 It's the fastest way for me to go to 1645 sleep in the afternoons and put golf on.

1646 But for me, I wanted people to see that 1647 the swing could be really, really simple, 1648 that you could learn how to play, shoot 1649 in the 70s every single day, hit the ball 1650 300 yards, do it pain-free, do it in a 1651 way that's going to prevent injury.

1652 Learn it really freaking fast.

And so I 1653 filmed the first lesson, I put it up on 1654 YouTube.

Like, I'll see what everybody 1655 thinks.

And people were like, Dude, this 1656 is awesome.

I want more, and I'm like, 1657 Really, this is 30 minutes of me 1658 yammering and giving a golf lesson.

It's 1659 pretty boring and they're like, No, no, 1660 so next thing?

I know I did, like, I did 1661 like, three dozen roadshow lessons on 1662 that trip to Florida and back, stopping 1663 all over the place, Kansas and Tennessee 1664 and Georgia and everywhere.

And 1665 These videos got millions of views and 1666 people were enamored with it because they 1667 saw like, okay, now I see like the 1668 culmination of everything.

Yes, there's a 1669 lot of things.

The golf swing is really 1670 complex when you get down to the details 1671 of it.

There's a million things that have 1672 to work right in order to hit the ball 1673 straight.

But in order to hit the ball 1674 straight, there's really only a few 1675 things that you need to understand and 1676 know how to do right.

And those million 1677 other things fall into place.

And that to 1678 me was my best accomplishment.

1679 In my career as a golf professional was 1680 taking everything that I knew and boiling 1681 it into one simple drill.

So where, 1682 what's next?

where's where's rotary 1683 swing?

Go from here?

Well, it's probably 1684 pretty obvious that I'm pretty much like 1685 a dog with a bone.

I don't, you know, I'm 1686 not stopping anytime soon.

I have set 1687 some pretty, 1688 Pretty extraordinary goals for myself.

1689 My biggest goal that I'm working towards 1690 now is that I want to help a million 1691 golfers break 80 for the first time.

And 1692 that's pretty extraordinary.

But as 1693 you've seen like in the Facebook group.

1694 We have guys, I had a guy post today, 1695 shot 69, guy last week shot 62, shot 67.

1696 These guys have never broke 70 before.

1697 Some of them haven't broke 80 before and 1698 they're shooting in the 60s and they're 1699 doing it in an unbelievably short period 1700 of time.

And it's all a result of the 1701 dead drill.

And so we created that 1702 Facebook group so that people could go in 1703 there and get help really quickly for 1704 free.

1705 And learn how to do the dead drill right.

1706 And get community support from other 1707 people doing it, and then see the results 1708 that people are getting from this.

So 1709 that's really the thing that I'm working 1710 towards next is I feel like the Dead 1711 Drill has given me that platform to make 1712 the golf swing super easy to learn, super 1713 fast to learn, really simple in a way 1714 that gives you a powerful, consistent 1715 swing that's safe for the body.

And so 1716 now my goal is getting results from that.

1717 And so we've had.

thousands and 1718 thousands of people tell us, you know, 1719 our Facebook comments or YouTube comments 1720 and emails and all our testimonials, 1721 which you see all the time.

We get 1722 hammered with testimonials.

I shot my 1723 best score.

I made a whole amount, you 1724 know, excited, 1725 you know, 1726 that's where I'm going next.

I want to 1727 take this to the world and I want a 1728 million golfers to break 80 for the first 1729 time.

And that's not even good enough.

I 1730 want a million golfers to consistently 1731 shoot in the seventies, every single time 1732 they go out and play golf and with the 1733 dead drill, it's possible.

1734 Awesome.

Any final thoughts?

1735 No, I, you know, it's been a wild 1736 journey, I guess.

It's been kind of fun 1737 to see as I haven't, I've never actually 1738 gone back through this.

And so doing this 1739 interview has been kind of fun to go back 1740 and remember stuff that I haven't thought 1741 about in literally decades.

You know, 1742 I've had a, I've had quite the run so far 1743 and I can't wait to see what the next 30 1744 years of my golf career takes me.

Well, I 1745 can, if I had a crystal ball, I'd say 1746 this.

1747 You're going to touch those million 1748 golfers and help them based upon the 1749 results that I see that are coming in on 1750 your testimonials.

1751 I would be very shocked if you don't 1752 touch the million golfers and help them 1753 break an 80 and get a 70.

1754 Well, thanks for sharing, Chuck.

I 1755 appreciate it for giving me a peek on the 1756 inside.

1757 Yeah, for sure.

Thanks.

I appreciate it.

1758 It was fun to kind of go down memory lane 1759 a little bit for me.

So it was fun.

1760 Thank you.

1761 Thanks.