birdie_man
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You have another phone lesson with him Brian?
Wow Toms is smokin' it.
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Brian Manzella
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A lot of people have read parts of this...but some haven't...from "An Interview with Brian.' The David Toms stuff is part of it:
Is this what led to your association with (renown Golfing Machine instructor) Ben Doyle?
Indirectly.
These “discoveries” of Golfing Machine concepts happened pretty regularly for a little over a year. Then it stopped. I was getting frustrated with my inability to continue learning the book. One day at my mom’s house, I threw the book across a couple of rooms. My mom and I had been through a lot the early part of that year (1987), with my divorce and my dad passing away, and she wasn’t about to let me or her get upset over a book. So she convinced me to go and study with Ben an get authorized myself.
How did that go?
I spent four full days with Ben, taking lessons and watching him teach. Ben started by asking me to show him how I would give a chipping lesson. Then he had me hit some eight-iron shots. I absolutely flushed every shot and was hitting the ball ridiculously close to the flag I was aiming at. Ben didn't blink and began to reconstruct my whole golf swing. I said, “Ben I came here to get authorized, not to fix my swing.” He told me that I had to be able to demonstrate correctly to become authorized, and why wasn't I thinking about playing (the tour)? He really felt that I had enough talent to play at any level I wanted to. That meant a lot to me.
I got the full dose of Ben’s changes and Ben sent me and about six hundred practice balls to this area by a tree. I preceded to hit all six hundred as fat as possible and didn’t hit a full six iron a hundred yards once. So here I am three thousand miles from home, out a couple grand for the trip, and I can’t make contact. I leaned up against the tree and had tears in my eyes. I knew that Ben knew his stuff, but I didn’t think I could ever do it. Three days later I was hitting it thirty yards per club further and better than I ever had in my whole life.
The last day that I was there I asked Ben for the (authorized instructor’s) test. He handed it to me. I asked him where was I supposed to go and “take” the test. Ben said it was a take home open book test and that I should try to do one page a day. I thought I would do it in a week. It took me two and a half years.
How did you do when you started to play and teach after you returned home?
The amount of useful material I learned those four days was tremendous. When I left to go home I felt like I had the plans for the atomic bomb. I was scared to death to teach it to anyone just yet. I was even more scared to try to demonstrate my new swing for anyone. It was so new to me, I thought I might miss it completely.
How long did it take before you were comfortable with the changes?
I saw Ben the first of June. By mid July I couldn’t shoot over 73 if I fell down. I was hitting it so far and straight it was a joke. Me and a dear friend of mine, Don Villavaso, played in a PGA of America Pro-Pro that August. I hit it unbelievable and we won fairly easy after being picked to finish dead last in a big field. The information I had applied from The Golfing Machine and Ben’s teaching had turned me into a much, much better player and teacher almost overnight.
What kind of changes were happening with your students?
Well, like I said I was kind of scared to teach all of it to anyone at first. It was, at that time, radically different then anything that was being taught. I had a 15 year old student named Tom Bartlett that I thought could be the next Nicklaus if he could become more technically sound. I intended to teach the material to him bit by bit. Tom was very impatient and excitable and he wanted to hear it all. So I taught it all to him all at once, just like Ben had done to me. Darned if that sucker didn’t learn it all, better than me, in about a week.
Michael Finney, who had seen Tom’s progress, wanted me to redo his swing after years of my prodding. He had trouble with the changes for about a month, but when he got it, he got it. He was about as dynamic as you could possibly be. Ben used to say, “Michael Feeney, ooooo so pure.”
Michael’s was playing collegietely at LSU at the time. His much improved swing and ball-striking made his teammates, and other college players that were his friends, very curious. They had heard bits and pieces of Golfing Machine mechanics and they wanted to know more.
Is this the reason that David Toms, Craig Perks, Mike Heinen and Greg Lesher began to work with you?
Yes, it was.
Michael Finney, David Toms, Mike Heinen, Greg Lesher and me all went to Jackson, Mississippi to try to qualify for the PGA Tour event in Mississippi in, I think, 1987.
We played a fivesome in the practice round and went to dinner that night.
Michael has always been a great straight man for me. He got me going about the golf swing at dinner and on the ride home. By the time we got back to the motel, I had three new students.
Did they like their first few lessons?
It was almost like magic with the LSU guys.
I went to a LSU practice session and videoed the whole team. We went back to Michael and Jimmy Tritt’s (another LSU player) apartment to watch. I looked at David Toms first.
I remember saying, “Wow David, you don’t turn your hips at all on the backswing.” Everybody laughed. I guess because they couldn’t believe anyone would say anything negative to a stud player like David. Of course, I am just like that—very honest and frank about golf stuff, and David appreciated the comment. I told him that if he did fixed his hip turn, his club would flatten out a bit and get deeper on the backswing and that he would be unbeatable.
Greg Lesher had a couple of little things to work on and so did some others.
I started coming to Baton Rouge and then Coach Britt Harrison sort of made me the unofficial team teacher. He had worked with Ben Doyle when he played at Oklahoma State and knew about The Golfing Machine from him and Mike Holder. So he just let me at ‘em.
Well after a month or so, everyone on the top five was striping it.
They won two major tournaments by over twenty shots each, shot up to #1 in the country and they did a story on them in Golf Digest.
Did Golf Digest mention your influence?
The title is of the story was LSU “semi-coachless, semi-awesome” and the point was that Britt wasn’t doing much coaching. He wasn’t.
And no, they didn’t mention me.
Tell us about working with David Toms.
David and I continued to work together through his LSU eligibility. He turned pro that summer to get prepared for the (PGA) Tour school that fall. At that time besides teaching David, I also caddied for him when I could. For a while, It was like cheating. I was playing little “teaching pro” games with him while I was caddying. I would tell him to aim and tell him how putts would break based on his swing and stroke at that time.
The first time I caddied for him was the U.S. Amateur qualifying at Lakewood Country Club in New Orleans. There was a Tropical storm in the area and the rain was heavy at times and the wind blew from every direction. It was so wet that I took off my shoes and caddied barefoot. The wind blew so hard, that a super large branch fell right in front of him, just before he hit his tee shot on #17 (a par 3). It could have killed him. He backed off, laughed, and hit it his 1-iron a foot.
David bogeyed #1, but after 27 holes he was 12 under par. That was when I knew he was the real deal.
Anyway we worked hard and went off to the first stage of the Tour school. No problem. Second stage. No Problem. Finals—After round four he was in 4th place. Forty-five players get their (Tour) cards.
He shot 78-80 and missed by a shot. It was maybe the biggest fluke I have ever seen in sports. It took him two more years to finally get his card.
What kinds of things did you work on with David?
He needed a later release and he needed to get the clubshaft “up” his left arm a little more through impact. He tended to hang left with his upper body on the backswing. After he was on tour we tried to get his hips to turn more through the ball. We fixed every one of these little things and a dozen more. Sometimes I overdid it. But, for the most part, they were all upgrades.
Did it help you to have a PGA Tour player at that point in your career?
Believe it or not, not much.
When David qualified for the Tour, I was only 29. When I went to tournaments to work with him, I was the youngest teacher on Tour.
But locally, in New Orleans, I got no press at all. Michael Finney’s dad Peter is a big-time sports writer in town and mentioned me a couple of times. But the golf writer in New Orleans at the time, Dave Lagarde, really didn’t care much for me. He never wrote about me in ‘89 when LSU has their run, Tom Bartlett won the New Orleans City Championship at 18 years old, Nakia Davis won the State Junior, Greg Lesher was low amateur in The U.S. Open and he and David were All-Americans. A dream year for a teacher. Not a single WORD in this clown’s column. And never ever, did this guy ever mention my teaching in his column. He recently got let go at the paper. I danced a jig.
And of course, no national press either.
You worked with David through 1997 but didn’t work with him again until the 2003 HP Classic in New Olreans. Did his swing change a lot?
When we worked together in the spring of 1997, we spent three days in Dallas making big changes. He had gotten flat and was hitting hooks.
I told him that we needed to attempt to “go back” to trying to swing like he did when he was a kid. So we worked on a more straight back and up backswing and the “feel” of coming straight down at it and then left through the ball. Also the corresponding less hip turn back and more through. He improved a bunch right away.
He went to the New Orleans event and shot 63 in the first round and gave me credit in the press room. Nothing in the paper the next day about it, of course.
He had worked with Rob Akins some before the Dallas lessons and almost exclusively since ‘97. They didn’t change very much of what we did in Dallas for a long time that I could see. But his swing did get better and better. Rob is a good teacher and David played great for most those six years.
What was behind the lessons at the 2003 HP Classic that led to his dominating victory at the first Wachovia championship?
I always watch David when he is on TV. In that years Masters I noticed it looked like he was trying to hit a hook with his irons from the middle of the fairway. I just didn’t look like his little hold shot or maybe subtle draw.
When I saw him in New Olreans he told me he was struggling and I knew he had missed a few cuts which is very unlike him. I told him about the “hook look” and I took some video on the course. When we got to the range and looked at it It was obvious that his club was coming way to much from the inside and below plane. I folded a towel into a plane board and told and showed him what he needed to do. He statred hitting it better right away and by the end of the session he was really on his way.
The next day I took some more video on the course in the Pro-Am and he looked liked a different person. Even though he missed the cut he hit a lot of good, solid shots and I knew he would play great soon. I just didn’t know how soon.
After he tore ‘em up in Charlotte (Wachovia) he said that that was the best he ever hit it. I have to say it was very impressive to watch on TV. He made so many really good swings it was silly.
You and David worked together in New Orleans again this past year (2004). Is it going to be a tradition?
In general, if David wants to work with me, it is because he is struggling. No problem—that's how it is for most of the people who take lessons from me,
David was in a mini-slump and although he was a little worried, I wasn't. He was doing the same thing wrong he always does wrong and I knew I could fix it. It took a couple of days, but I did.
David's six rounds coming into New Orleans were 73-75-76-79-78-73, a 75.67 average!
His first two rounds in New Orleans were 69-66.
He won again three weeks later.
David is such a good guy and is so good for golf that I was my supreme pleasure to help him play the way he can. Which is as good as anyone in the game.
What is different about working with PGA Tour players?
First of all they are ALL high maintenance. You are under much greater pressure because you are fooling with their careers. Working with David Toms, Craig Perks and Tommy Moore helped me as a teacher tremendously. You find out what to say and how to say it to a player going out to try and shoot a score. I am so much better at that now, it is a joke. Experience matters, but if you don’t understand the swing, it doesn’t matter much.
Having said that, I feel that it is important not to appease them. Teach them what it is they need to know and need to do. The trick is not just the what, it is the when and how.
Is this what led to your association with (renown Golfing Machine instructor) Ben Doyle?
Indirectly.
These “discoveries” of Golfing Machine concepts happened pretty regularly for a little over a year. Then it stopped. I was getting frustrated with my inability to continue learning the book. One day at my mom’s house, I threw the book across a couple of rooms. My mom and I had been through a lot the early part of that year (1987), with my divorce and my dad passing away, and she wasn’t about to let me or her get upset over a book. So she convinced me to go and study with Ben an get authorized myself.
How did that go?
I spent four full days with Ben, taking lessons and watching him teach. Ben started by asking me to show him how I would give a chipping lesson. Then he had me hit some eight-iron shots. I absolutely flushed every shot and was hitting the ball ridiculously close to the flag I was aiming at. Ben didn't blink and began to reconstruct my whole golf swing. I said, “Ben I came here to get authorized, not to fix my swing.” He told me that I had to be able to demonstrate correctly to become authorized, and why wasn't I thinking about playing (the tour)? He really felt that I had enough talent to play at any level I wanted to. That meant a lot to me.
I got the full dose of Ben’s changes and Ben sent me and about six hundred practice balls to this area by a tree. I preceded to hit all six hundred as fat as possible and didn’t hit a full six iron a hundred yards once. So here I am three thousand miles from home, out a couple grand for the trip, and I can’t make contact. I leaned up against the tree and had tears in my eyes. I knew that Ben knew his stuff, but I didn’t think I could ever do it. Three days later I was hitting it thirty yards per club further and better than I ever had in my whole life.
The last day that I was there I asked Ben for the (authorized instructor’s) test. He handed it to me. I asked him where was I supposed to go and “take” the test. Ben said it was a take home open book test and that I should try to do one page a day. I thought I would do it in a week. It took me two and a half years.
How did you do when you started to play and teach after you returned home?
The amount of useful material I learned those four days was tremendous. When I left to go home I felt like I had the plans for the atomic bomb. I was scared to death to teach it to anyone just yet. I was even more scared to try to demonstrate my new swing for anyone. It was so new to me, I thought I might miss it completely.
How long did it take before you were comfortable with the changes?
I saw Ben the first of June. By mid July I couldn’t shoot over 73 if I fell down. I was hitting it so far and straight it was a joke. Me and a dear friend of mine, Don Villavaso, played in a PGA of America Pro-Pro that August. I hit it unbelievable and we won fairly easy after being picked to finish dead last in a big field. The information I had applied from The Golfing Machine and Ben’s teaching had turned me into a much, much better player and teacher almost overnight.
What kind of changes were happening with your students?
Well, like I said I was kind of scared to teach all of it to anyone at first. It was, at that time, radically different then anything that was being taught. I had a 15 year old student named Tom Bartlett that I thought could be the next Nicklaus if he could become more technically sound. I intended to teach the material to him bit by bit. Tom was very impatient and excitable and he wanted to hear it all. So I taught it all to him all at once, just like Ben had done to me. Darned if that sucker didn’t learn it all, better than me, in about a week.
Michael Finney, who had seen Tom’s progress, wanted me to redo his swing after years of my prodding. He had trouble with the changes for about a month, but when he got it, he got it. He was about as dynamic as you could possibly be. Ben used to say, “Michael Feeney, ooooo so pure.”
Michael’s was playing collegietely at LSU at the time. His much improved swing and ball-striking made his teammates, and other college players that were his friends, very curious. They had heard bits and pieces of Golfing Machine mechanics and they wanted to know more.
Is this the reason that David Toms, Craig Perks, Mike Heinen and Greg Lesher began to work with you?
Yes, it was.
Michael Finney, David Toms, Mike Heinen, Greg Lesher and me all went to Jackson, Mississippi to try to qualify for the PGA Tour event in Mississippi in, I think, 1987.
We played a fivesome in the practice round and went to dinner that night.
Michael has always been a great straight man for me. He got me going about the golf swing at dinner and on the ride home. By the time we got back to the motel, I had three new students.
Did they like their first few lessons?
It was almost like magic with the LSU guys.
I went to a LSU practice session and videoed the whole team. We went back to Michael and Jimmy Tritt’s (another LSU player) apartment to watch. I looked at David Toms first.
I remember saying, “Wow David, you don’t turn your hips at all on the backswing.” Everybody laughed. I guess because they couldn’t believe anyone would say anything negative to a stud player like David. Of course, I am just like that—very honest and frank about golf stuff, and David appreciated the comment. I told him that if he did fixed his hip turn, his club would flatten out a bit and get deeper on the backswing and that he would be unbeatable.
Greg Lesher had a couple of little things to work on and so did some others.
I started coming to Baton Rouge and then Coach Britt Harrison sort of made me the unofficial team teacher. He had worked with Ben Doyle when he played at Oklahoma State and knew about The Golfing Machine from him and Mike Holder. So he just let me at ‘em.
Well after a month or so, everyone on the top five was striping it.
They won two major tournaments by over twenty shots each, shot up to #1 in the country and they did a story on them in Golf Digest.
Did Golf Digest mention your influence?
The title is of the story was LSU “semi-coachless, semi-awesome” and the point was that Britt wasn’t doing much coaching. He wasn’t.
And no, they didn’t mention me.
Tell us about working with David Toms.
David and I continued to work together through his LSU eligibility. He turned pro that summer to get prepared for the (PGA) Tour school that fall. At that time besides teaching David, I also caddied for him when I could. For a while, It was like cheating. I was playing little “teaching pro” games with him while I was caddying. I would tell him to aim and tell him how putts would break based on his swing and stroke at that time.
The first time I caddied for him was the U.S. Amateur qualifying at Lakewood Country Club in New Orleans. There was a Tropical storm in the area and the rain was heavy at times and the wind blew from every direction. It was so wet that I took off my shoes and caddied barefoot. The wind blew so hard, that a super large branch fell right in front of him, just before he hit his tee shot on #17 (a par 3). It could have killed him. He backed off, laughed, and hit it his 1-iron a foot.
David bogeyed #1, but after 27 holes he was 12 under par. That was when I knew he was the real deal.
Anyway we worked hard and went off to the first stage of the Tour school. No problem. Second stage. No Problem. Finals—After round four he was in 4th place. Forty-five players get their (Tour) cards.
He shot 78-80 and missed by a shot. It was maybe the biggest fluke I have ever seen in sports. It took him two more years to finally get his card.
What kinds of things did you work on with David?
He needed a later release and he needed to get the clubshaft “up” his left arm a little more through impact. He tended to hang left with his upper body on the backswing. After he was on tour we tried to get his hips to turn more through the ball. We fixed every one of these little things and a dozen more. Sometimes I overdid it. But, for the most part, they were all upgrades.
Did it help you to have a PGA Tour player at that point in your career?
Believe it or not, not much.
When David qualified for the Tour, I was only 29. When I went to tournaments to work with him, I was the youngest teacher on Tour.
But locally, in New Orleans, I got no press at all. Michael Finney’s dad Peter is a big-time sports writer in town and mentioned me a couple of times. But the golf writer in New Orleans at the time, Dave Lagarde, really didn’t care much for me. He never wrote about me in ‘89 when LSU has their run, Tom Bartlett won the New Orleans City Championship at 18 years old, Nakia Davis won the State Junior, Greg Lesher was low amateur in The U.S. Open and he and David were All-Americans. A dream year for a teacher. Not a single WORD in this clown’s column. And never ever, did this guy ever mention my teaching in his column. He recently got let go at the paper. I danced a jig.
And of course, no national press either.
You worked with David through 1997 but didn’t work with him again until the 2003 HP Classic in New Olreans. Did his swing change a lot?
When we worked together in the spring of 1997, we spent three days in Dallas making big changes. He had gotten flat and was hitting hooks.
I told him that we needed to attempt to “go back” to trying to swing like he did when he was a kid. So we worked on a more straight back and up backswing and the “feel” of coming straight down at it and then left through the ball. Also the corresponding less hip turn back and more through. He improved a bunch right away.
He went to the New Orleans event and shot 63 in the first round and gave me credit in the press room. Nothing in the paper the next day about it, of course.
He had worked with Rob Akins some before the Dallas lessons and almost exclusively since ‘97. They didn’t change very much of what we did in Dallas for a long time that I could see. But his swing did get better and better. Rob is a good teacher and David played great for most those six years.
What was behind the lessons at the 2003 HP Classic that led to his dominating victory at the first Wachovia championship?
I always watch David when he is on TV. In that years Masters I noticed it looked like he was trying to hit a hook with his irons from the middle of the fairway. I just didn’t look like his little hold shot or maybe subtle draw.
When I saw him in New Olreans he told me he was struggling and I knew he had missed a few cuts which is very unlike him. I told him about the “hook look” and I took some video on the course. When we got to the range and looked at it It was obvious that his club was coming way to much from the inside and below plane. I folded a towel into a plane board and told and showed him what he needed to do. He statred hitting it better right away and by the end of the session he was really on his way.
The next day I took some more video on the course in the Pro-Am and he looked liked a different person. Even though he missed the cut he hit a lot of good, solid shots and I knew he would play great soon. I just didn’t know how soon.
After he tore ‘em up in Charlotte (Wachovia) he said that that was the best he ever hit it. I have to say it was very impressive to watch on TV. He made so many really good swings it was silly.
You and David worked together in New Orleans again this past year (2004). Is it going to be a tradition?
In general, if David wants to work with me, it is because he is struggling. No problem—that's how it is for most of the people who take lessons from me,
David was in a mini-slump and although he was a little worried, I wasn't. He was doing the same thing wrong he always does wrong and I knew I could fix it. It took a couple of days, but I did.
David's six rounds coming into New Orleans were 73-75-76-79-78-73, a 75.67 average!
His first two rounds in New Orleans were 69-66.
He won again three weeks later.
David is such a good guy and is so good for golf that I was my supreme pleasure to help him play the way he can. Which is as good as anyone in the game.
What is different about working with PGA Tour players?
First of all they are ALL high maintenance. You are under much greater pressure because you are fooling with their careers. Working with David Toms, Craig Perks and Tommy Moore helped me as a teacher tremendously. You find out what to say and how to say it to a player going out to try and shoot a score. I am so much better at that now, it is a joke. Experience matters, but if you don’t understand the swing, it doesn’t matter much.
Having said that, I feel that it is important not to appease them. Teach them what it is they need to know and need to do. The trick is not just the what, it is the when and how.
Brian I get the feeling you are under appreciated for the work you do.
In light of that I thought you might enjoy reading this article which highlights Deon Branch the 2005 Super Bowl MVP.
http://www.drrobertbrooks.com/writings/articles/0503.html
In light of that I thought you might enjoy reading this article which highlights Deon Branch the 2005 Super Bowl MVP.
http://www.drrobertbrooks.com/writings/articles/0503.html
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