The 2nd Cut Newsletter: Edition #48
Butch Harmon, PGA Champ Wrap-Up, Cam Smith Chipping, Swaying vs Turning, 50 Yards vs. 100 Yards
“I worked with Tiger [starting in 1993], I learned that the best way to motivate him was to tell him he couldn’t do something. He’d play with a guy who had a certain shot he liked, and I’d say, “That’s not for you. That would take too long to pick up.” Tiger would go work his butt off to show me he could learn it, and of course, he pretty much always did.” - Butch Harmon
📰 Edition #48 📰
Welcome back to The 2nd Cut Newsletter!
📫 In today’s Newsletter 📫 :
Butch Harmon, PGA Champ Wrap-Up, Cam Smith Chipping, Swaying vs Turning, 50 Yards vs. 100 Yards
Check out last week’s Deep Dive:
Training vs Playing Revisited
For those who read Edition #47, below is a quick update on my driver. For those of you who didn’t read it, here’s a quick snippet: “I proceeded to hit a worm burner shank off the tee six different times throughout the round. Each drive went somewhere around 75 to 100 yards, leaving me with quite a bit left. Driver is historically my best club by far. I h…
PGA Championship Wrap-Up
Congrats to Xander Schauffele for winning the 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla. What a tournament. There were tons of big names at the top of the leaderboard: Bryson hitting bombs and still losing at -20 under, Xander finally pulling through, and Scottie getting arrested.
The Scottie stuff was insane. I thought it was a joke until ESPN's lead reporter said he witnessed it happen. What are the odds? I won’t go into this any deeper, but I definitely didn’t have Scottie Scheffler getting arrested on my bingo card. The memes were fantastic, though.
Although I did want to see a playoff, I was happy for Xander. He finally got the monkey off his back and won a major in crunch time. I don’t know if he’ll win anymore, but this could be exactly what he needed to loosen up and stack a few more majors.
The tweet below from LKD does a good job of showing how the narrative of an athlete is told and how it comes down to the smallest factors. And it’s why we love sports.
That ball misses, and we’re talking about Xander in a completely different way… but he made it.
🐦 Tweets of the Week 🐦
Great clip and commentary from Jonathan Yarwood showing Cam Smith’s pitch shot. Cam Smith has such a smooth touch around the greens.
This is a great little clip from Ryan Mouque here. Another lesson to myself is realizing what I think I’m doing and what I’m actually doing are often not the same. After watching this video, I looked at a video of my swing, which looked nothing like this.
📺 💻 T2C Media 📺 💻
This video is for you if you are a golf nerd interested in golf history and the golf swing. It’s over an hour long and packed with insights. Butch talks about golfing with Ben Hogan as a kid, working with Tiger Woods for a decade, and his approach to coaching.
🔢 Stat(s) of the Week 🔢
Ingrain this in your brain. Closer is almost ALWAYS better. Yes, there are situations and reasons not to hit it closer. Such as bringing trouble into play or hitting a club you are not confident in versus a lesser club you are comfortable with. But if you're doing it because you feel like you are better from 100 than from 50… well, the data would say you are wrong.
As I’ve said before, I think this fallacy happens because even though the 50-yard shot FEELS crappy and the 100-yard shot FEELS better, we still hit it closer on average from 50.
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Til next time.
