Podcast Transcript
Josh Nichols
Dallas Webster, how does the mental game come into a golf GPS app?
Dallas Webster
Man, in a bunch of different ways, right? So I started building a golf GPS app really to help myself get better at golf. Now I’ve shared it with everybody to help everybody get better at golf.
The better I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized how big of an impact the mental side of the game has on everything, whether it’s preparing for a shot, hitting a shot, analyzing a shot. The mental game plays a huge role in all of those things. And so one of the things that differentiates Tangents from many other apps is we actually allow you to track a lot of that, right, to actually make notes on how you performed those things while you played, which I was surprised the first few times that I did it, keeping a mental scorecard, just how many of my poor shots were related to, you know, whether it was a distraction or lack of commitment or whatever it is, all the different things that go into the mental game of golf.
I was amazed how much of my bad golf was dictated by those moments. And so we’ve built the app in such a way that you can just play, put it in the background, but you can get as deep as you want to go. And if you want to keep a mental scorecard, you want to track strike quality, whatever you want to track on your journey to improvement, we can track. And I’ve certainly used it to help myself with the mental side of golf.
Josh Nichols
Hmm. Yeah, something I’ve admired about Tangent app and just as a caveat to this entire episode, Dallas has told me to say none of this. If I say nice things or horrible things about Tangent, you will know that it’s just coming straight from me. He won’t be paying me off after this interview. But what I’ve seen from Tangent and one of the coolest things is what you said, you can have it completely passive or you can be very, very active in use of it. So if you’re a non-technology on the golf course type of person like myself, you can just have it really passive. I have an Apple Watch if I want to wear it or not even, and I wanna ask you about this, like, okay, what if I don’t want any tech on the golf course at all, how can I interact with it? But it can be passive or varying levels of active and the deepest level of active is, okay, on that shot, what were the conditions? What was the quality of the shot, the strike quality, what was the direction, what was the lie, how was your mental game? So yeah, that’s been something I’ve admired about Tangent app. So that’s a good development on your part.
Dallas Webster
We’ll take it all. Maybe that’s a good jump off point for me to kind of give the background of how I imagine the app, why I built it, and even how I use it. Because I’m a person that doesn’t want to be distracted on the golf course. I don’t want to think about other things. I want to be focused on golf. To a large extent, I’m there to get away from the rest of the world where you’ve got emails and text messages and responsibilities. I want to get lost in the challenge of what golf is.
I started this app development journey, or really I started this golf journey, let’s say back in about 2013. I played competitive golf in high school. I wasn’t good enough to play in college. I went to school at Texas Tech. I actually worked at the golf course. This is how big of a golf nut I was. I would actually go and mow the greens in the morning before going to class so that I could afford to play golf at Texas Tech’s Rawls course, beautiful golf course by the way. But if you fast forward, you know, gosh, seven, eight years after getting out of college, I missed playing competitive golf. I hadn’t played a lot of competitive golf. I was about to have my firstborn son and I decided to get back into competitive golf. So I joined what used to be called the Golf Channel Amtour to start playing tournaments and very quickly got, I’d say addicted to tournament golf. And then I was probably around a four or five handicap. And I very quickly also kind of got exposed. I was in the championship flight of Golf Channel Amtour and I could be competitive here and there, but I’d have these, you know, off rounds or whatever, and it’d be a challenge.
So I, with my engineering brain, was thinking, how do I find a way to get better, to be more competitive, and actually practice less? I’m about to have my first son, life’s busy, work’s busy, I’ve gotta kind of solve this equation of how do I improve at golf and actually play and practice less? And luckily in 2014, that’s when Mark Rodey’s Every Shot Counts book came out. And so I kind of learned the analytics of golf, right? Like how to mathematically quantify the good and the bad. But so I started writing software to selfishly help myself play better golf. And so when I’m circling to your question of like, how do you get the most out of it without using it on the golf course, that’s actually how I designed it. I didn’t like using technology. And so I literally built this, what I would call background game tracker. It used GPS to track everywhere that I went. And it would log the shots to where all I really had to do is put the score in. And I would put the score in either after the round or after each hole. And then it would go use some intelligence to figure out where the shots were and do all that tracking. So like on the golf course, I wasn’t even using it as a golf GPS. I was a laser rangefinder guy, right? I’m gonna go shoot the laser and know where the flag is. I’ve moved away, a little bit away from that for a variety of other reasons in terms of strategy and course management and things that I’ve learned.
But so I actually designed an app that I hardly used on the golf course. I would start the round and put it away and in the background it’s tracking everywhere that you go. That’s how it started. Now it’s evolved since then. I developed an AI caddy here in the last couple of years that from a course management perspective has even changed the way I look at golf decisions in terms of, and we can get to that maybe in a little bit, in terms of the mental game and taking emotion out of decisions for targets and whatnot. The AI caddy is great for that.
But I started with the basic principle of how do I track my golf without writing down everything or doing these very complex things that a lot of my competitors still do to track the golf. How do I make it very, very simple to know everywhere that I went and what I did on the golf course without me having to care about it while I’m playing. And that’s how Tangent kind of started. Now where it’s at though, as I kind of went through that game improvement journey, what I started finding was that if I hit my bad shots, here’s my tournament brain. I would finish a tournament and I’d be driving home either excited or disappointed by the result. And I would be going over every shot in my head basically. I’d replay the round and say, what happened here? What happened here? What happened here? To try to find the trend, like where I either lost it and got off the rails and got lost or where I played really well. And then the app kind of does that for you. But as I was going through those shots, you’d get to certain ones and be like, okay, I hit that fat. Why did I hit it fat?
I hit it fat because I was concerned I might have a little bit too much club. I didn’t fully commit to it. And so I probably like deceled whatever hit the ball fat. And really the root cause was commitment, right? It wasn’t, you know, in my normal dispersion of shots, if I hit the ball, you give me a hundred balls in the range, I’m never going to hit the shot. But in that moment, in that tournament, I didn’t trust the distance that I was about to hit it. I didn’t commit to it, chunked it. And so then I got to a point where, okay, if that’s the analysis, I want to be able to put that in the app so that, because I’m not going to remember that 10 weeks from now to say that’s what the problem was. So we added the capability to track things like impact. So I could mark that I hit that shot fat and mental scorecard where I could go say, I wasn’t committed to that one. And now what it allows me to do is instead of just getting those results from a single round where I’d spend that time going shot by shot, I could go look at my last 10 rounds and say, well, how have I performed? What are the trends? Well, when I’m stressed and uncommitted, I tend to hit the ball fat. So let me go think about that. How do I go work on that part of it? It’s because I’m de-selling. Is there something different I could have done in my pre-shot routine? Is there something different I could have done from a club selection? Like how do you go fight through those maybe more nuanced things to get better?
I mean, you’re a pretty distinguished player yourself. You know, as you’re starting to try to carve off those fractions of a stroke, you really got to look at those types of details, what’s happening in those moments. And I think, you know, the importance of pre-shot, post-shot routine, all that kind of stuff, being able to analyze that is absolutely critical. Because otherwise, if you just throw that away as, that’s part of my dispersion, I hit the ball fat sometimes, you’re really missing something that can help you improve down the road. But that’s how it started. It started where it’s like, hey, how do I go track everything in the background where you never have to touch the app if you don’t want to? And then if you really need some details on what you wanted from the round, you can add that information. And you can add it in the round from your Apple Watch. You can actually tap and do the mental scorecard or whatnot. Or a lot of times I still do it post-round. I’ll do all the tracking and score while I’m playing. Use the app as little as possible to be honest with you. It’s kind of weird being a developer and saying I designed an app that I want to use as little as possible on the golf course, but that’s true. And then when I’m done, I’ll kind of go through again and just add some of that extra metadata to the shots when I’m doing that post round review either at the 19th hole or later, but then it’s documented, it’s tracked, and I have that data forever.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. So then you mentioned shaving fractions of strokes and I mean, for the large majority of us, it’s not fractions. And for me, across the last several years of my game, it’s not fractions. It’s big, you know, doubles and triples and lots of bogeys and many, much fewer birdies. And you have what you call the Tangent Four where it’s three putts, two chips, penalties and recoveries. So those four are kind of what I would call the low hanging fruit, or maybe you might call them something different, that’s like the, okay, if we’re going to address something that’s between me and playing better, these are first. And those really add up quick. Those aren’t fractions, right? That’s like, I mean, I three-putted three times today. That’s not a fraction. Like if I lowered my stroke average by two or three by eliminating three-putts, that’s huge, right? Even as a scratch, one handicap, whatever I am now, I can eliminate three-putts and just decrease my scoring average. So if it’s mental related, that’s even more important. So I say all that to get to, okay, let’s say one of the Tangent Four or multiple of the Tangent Four is mental for you. What, you know, let’s say it’s three putting. What would you, how would you go about addressing, okay, these three putts, I can see on all three of them, I was uncommitted or distracted or whatever. How would you take that and work on it personally, you personally, how would you do it?
Dallas Webster
Yeah, sure. So one thing I’ll say about the Tangent 4 as we kind of get in that too is it is kind of inspired by the Tiger V, right? Like in this journey, I’ve read as many books as I can. I’ve gone through as many things. I’m a big fan of Scott Fawcett and Decade, I’ve read all his stuff too. So it’s a little bit inspired by the Tiger V, but what we did with the Tangent 4 is simplified it a little bit because for your higher handicappers, you know, burying par fives or not bogeying par fives, like it doesn’t really matter as much as these kind of key things. Stay out of trouble. That’s recoveries and penalties. Don’t hit in recoveries and penalties because those kill the scorecard no matter where you are. And like, I think in the Tiger V, they track double bogeys, right? But usually when you’re getting a double bogey, it’s because of penalties or recoveries. Like there’s overlap between these things. So we simplified it to penalties and recoveries. Don’t do that. Three putts and then two chips.
So to answer your question, how would I go tackle putting for example, I always start kind of with maybe the highest level types of things. So if I’m struggling with three putts, generally that means one of two things. I either struggle with the first putt to get it close, close enough to where I can’t miss it, right? Or I’m struggling with shorter putts and actually making putts that I should make, right? So I kind of throw putts into two buckets. You got putts that you should absolutely make. So that’s like kind of inside that four foot range, right? Pretty close. Those are ones that you should make versus almost everything else. And everything else you’re trying to make it, you’d like to make it, but statistics just tell you that it’s hard and you’re not gonna make many of them. So if I’m three putting, I wanna know which of those two buckets is it? Is it that I’m not making the short ones or is it that I’m really struggling getting the long ones close enough to where I have more of the ones that I should make?
So I’ll break it into those two things and if you think about golf in terms of skills, with putting probably the most important is speed control. Can I hit it the speed that I intend? Right? And then next important is probably your read. Can you tell what the green is going to do and what it’s looking? And then lastly, least important kind of in my mind, is can you hit the line you intended to hit? And the reason why I would say that’s the least likely is because, one, that’s just hard. And two, on the putting green, it’s kind of different than driver. You’re not usually missing your line by like a mile, right? Usually if you’re missing your line, it’s by a little bit. That matters when you’re really close to the hole. When you’re far from the hole, it’s tough. You’re trying to get it close anyway. So I kind of rank them in that order. So I would go through, is it a speed thing first, that’s for the long putts. If it’s not a speed thing, then I’m really focused on kind of the short putt.
But once I know which bucket it is, now I can ask myself better questions on what my problem is. So let’s say one that I’ve struggled with in the past is short putts and what I call putting demons, where you’re standing over a short putt and you got this little voice in your head that’s saying, you’re gonna miss it. Or introducing that bit of doubt. Probably most people can relate to that whether you’ve played competitive golf or just with your buddies. If you got a two and a half, three footer that doesn’t matter, you walk up, you don’t worry about it, you let your subconscious just hit it and you make that putt like 90% of the time. But as soon as that putt matters to you, you start to experience thoughts maybe that you wouldn’t otherwise have, like you’re gonna miss this, don’t blow it, whatever it is, right? And then those thoughts aren’t productive towards making the putt. So I’ve had that where I’ve used the golf stats to highlight that I’m struggling with the shorter putts. Speed is fine, but I’m getting it inside that good circle and I’m just not making as many of those putts as I should.
And so then it’s a couple of things. I would go do drills that give me a lot of experience hitting those, because I think anytime you can have experience to help you build confidence, that alone can help you kind of fight those negative thoughts or whatever. It’s like, hey, I’ve done this a million times. I’ve been practicing this. I’ve been working on this. And it builds that confidence to say, hey, that demon doesn’t matter. Like, it can’t control me. I’ve hit this a million times. I’ve got this. And you hit it.
But then another thing that’s worked for me too is you kind of got that black cloud over your head or whatever that introduces you some doubt. Anytime you have those thoughts, I’m backing off, resetting, trying to think of something positive or visualize the ball going in the hole before I set it and just trying to make sure that I’m hitting it with that clear mindset. I don’t allow myself, if I stand over a ball, and this is a skill that I am constantly working on because it’s difficult. If I’m standing over a ball and I get that little voice inside my head that says you’re gonna miss that, how do I make sure that I back off, reset and don’t hit that putt? Don’t try to power through it. But so those are some things like I use the stats to dictate which part it is and then I try to go look at, when I’m missing those three footers, why is it missing it? I’m missing it because I’m having those moments of doubt, those bad thoughts right before I hit a golf shot. Let me figure out then how to work through that, right? How to either back off, reset, get in a better mindset and then see if I make more of those putts. And yeah, that’s kind of what’s worked for me on those.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, I like that approach to it. You mentioned demons. Why do you think demons come up? Why do you think that voice even pops in your head in the first place? Where does that come from in your opinion or experience?
Dallas Webster
Man, fear of success or fear of failure can be kind of either way. I think I’ve experienced both. I think anytime you want something really badly, you can have a tendency to try to force it, right? Versus using the part of your brain that knows how to do something. I play a lot of other sports too. I play soccer still at least once a week. Like a lot of other sports, you have the benefit in my mind of being able to be reactive. It’s a little easier to get lost and kind of in the flow because you don’t have time to microanalyze everything. And golf is different that way. So like, if you give the brain time to think about scenarios, it’s kind of that lizard brain part of us that is gonna naturally worry and think of all the bad stuff that can happen to try to protect you, right? That’s not necessarily conducive to good golf. So I do think a lot of that’s natural.
On my journey, I’ve read a ton of books on neuroscience. I’m fascinated by how the brain works. So I’ve read a ton of that to try to figure out how do you get the best performance? How do you solve some of those things? Those moments of doubt there, that’s just kind of how your brain works. But you’ve got to figure out how to reset and get to the part of your brain that knows how to hit a golf shot. The part of my brain that knows how to hit a golf shot is not the part of my brain that’s analyzing a thousand things at once and trying to make these other decisions, right? So how do I free myself up to use the part of my brain that knows how to hit a golf shot?
Josh Nichols
Yeah, micro analysis, that’s an interesting one. And that gets back into how passive is the golf GPS app and how active should we be while we’re on the golf course thinking about these things. And you said you’re a, yeah, this is my app and I’m trying to get everyone to use it, trying to sell this app and I want to talk good about it, but I try not to use it while I’m even playing. So for you as someone who is kind of hands off the technology while you play, is there, like what are the pros and cons to using an app while you play for that micro analysis and overthinking things? Or is it possible that you and I under think things? Or I don’t know, how do you think about that micro analysis with a stats GPS app?
Dallas Webster
I think lots of people are different. Different people have different flows and some people need that encouragement, some people need that… I get lots of feedback from users that like just using the app in general and tracking stuff, tracking shots or looking at it even while they’re playing, helps them stay in the moment and stay involved in the golf, right? So some people actually, it’s a benefit for them to have it there where they can look at the app, see that it’s tracking shots, see how far their drive went and that kind of stuff, because it keeps them engaged in what they’re doing. And then we got other users that are like, no, I don’t want to engage in the app at all and kind of distance themselves from it. So one, I think there’s a little bit of a personal preference just in terms of what works for you when you’re on the golf course, what gets you the most present.
But I think all of us, if you want to play your best golf, it’s how do I get the most present? How do I get the most focused on what it is that I’m doing right now thinking about this? And so if using a golf app and, you know, putting scores in and focusing on your score and what do our relative par doesn’t work for you? Well, cool, we have flows that allow you to not do that, where you don’t have to be introduced to score at all. If it does motivate you, then yeah, we have that. So we’ve tried to make the app to where it fits into whatever works for you, right?
But for me, I’ve found myself as I’ve developed it more, actually using the app even more, because our AI caddy, for example, has been super beneficial for me. So I watched all the Decade content, again, fan of Scott Fawcett and what he’s done. In a way, in our implementation, I’ve kind of tried to automate a lot of concepts that are in Decade and in others, right, in terms of how to select good targets. And so some of our users, my dad’s an example, he loves our AI caddy. Our AI caddy will literally tell you where to hit and what to hit, right? He’ll say, hit a driver and aim at this right side of the fairway, the bunker. Like literally draws a target on the map and says, aim at this and hit this golf club. And he will blindly follow it, right? So for him, it honestly takes some of that decision making even out of it. Like I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna follow that and I can commit to it and I can just go, right?
Whereas like for myself, I’ve always felt like I’m good at doing that strategy part. So when I started building our AI caddy, I was not building it for myself. I thought I was building it for higher handicappers or yeah, people that need that help. And what I’ve found having built it is I fell into a trap where now it helps me tremendously. And now I actually, in the same way I was gauging my performance doubles and whatnot versus my mental scorecard, I’ll gauge it versus did I follow the caddy or not. And what I’ve found is a lot of times when I have my highest numbers, it’s because I didn’t do what the caddy told me to do. There’s a bit of a emotional response to that, right? And I’ll caveat that by saying AI Caddy is not perfect. None of these things are perfect. In the end, this is, you know, it’s trying to make the best decision based on the information it has to help you make decisions. So it’s not infallible.
But what I’ve found is that when I tend to disagree with it, particularly on tee shots, it’ll be telling me to lay up and hit a three wood, right? Which I’ll be like, I’m feeling good with driver today. I got to bomb this, right? The difference is I’m kind of making that decision based on emotion. I’m saying I feel good today. I think I can hit this shot. I’m going to hit the driver. Whereas it’s making an emotionless decision. It’s saying, well, yeah, we’ve measured thousands of your drives. We know what your dispersion looks like. We know what the trouble is on the golf course. We can see the bunkers and what the wind is doing and everything. And like, I don’t care how confident you feel in this golf shot. Your dispersion says that’s not a good decision because if you hit a good shot and it lands inside your dispersion, you could still have a bad result, right? That’s golf. So scale it back to kind of a three-wood.
To answer your question, I found myself actually using the app a little bit more as I go, because that AI caddy component, it’s just like if you had a very experienced caddy on your bag helping you make those decisions, and probably 90% of the time for me, it’s just confirming the decision I’ve already made. It’s like the 10% where it’s like, okay, it might be recommending something other than what I was gonna do, and that little bit of challenge forces me in my pre-shot routine to kind of go through, okay, well, why might it be different? Am I making the best decision? Let’s get super committed to what it is that I’m gonna go do and then try to go execute the shot, right?
In the end, that’s what it is. I think just an interesting side note from the mental aspect, this is kind of an epiphany maybe that I’ve had even in the last handful of days is how the app works is it learns your distances and dispersions. The more you play, it’s got this learning system. It’s learning what clubs you hit and then it knows where it went relative to target. So it knows your driver has a 60-yard dispersion and, you know, some distance window that it’s typically going to go in. The interesting thing about the mental part of the game is that dispersion that it shows you, for the most part, is what your dispersion is if you’re committed and you hit kind of what I would call a stock shot. The interesting thing about the mental game is if you’re not committed or you’re not, you know, going through your routine, that dispersion window kind of goes out the window. Like, I can hook a ball off the planet. That’s not in my dispersion. If you gave me 100 balls on a driver, I would never hit that golf shot. But if you put me on a hole where I’m not comfortable, I’m second guessing it or whatever, shots that aren’t in that dispersion window come out and anything could happen.
So you can’t have an AI caddy that necessarily understands that that’s about to happen, that hey, the drink cart just pulled up and you’re thinking about that and not this and you’re gonna hit the wild one. But it does help you get ready to make those decisions. And then the other side of it is when I do hit that one that’s wild off the planet, I can track, hey, was that a mental thing where I just didn’t get committed or not?
Josh Nichols
Yeah. And that you can learn yourself over time. And I wonder if there is a, and this might turn into app development rambling, but I wonder if there is a way in an app to, to kind of say, okay, when there are circumstances that lead to an uncommitted swing or a distracted swing, this is your new dispersion pattern or these are the, you know, this is here’s the area that the ball usually goes when you have clicked after you hit the bad shot and, you know, that could be a scary thing to see maybe. Maybe that would make you even less committed like I don’t want to do that but it could, you could get into a situation and like there’s the mower. There’s the cart. There’s the whatever or you’re, you know, you’re gonna be on the first tee, so you look on the app and it says, okay, this is where it usually goes if you’re not committed, so here’s, it’s even more important to be committed. I don’t know if that’s, if that feature would even seem valuable to you, but I don’t know, what do you think about that?
Dallas Webster
I think, so one, we have all the data. One of the things that we show, and look, we’re continuing to work on improving our mental scorecard and how we use each of these features, but we do collect all the data. So I can specifically tell you what your strokes gained driver is when you hit a committed one versus when you tell us that you didn’t hit a committed one. We have all that data. We could actually show you those dispersions. I think from putting my golf hat on in terms of how would I go implement that, I don’t love the idea of showing somebody in real time what they would do if they were not committed, because the brain, you know, in the same neuroscience stuff. Like the brain doesn’t understand don’ts very well at all. This is something that’s, I mean, I’m not the first one to say any of these things. These are just kind of all learnings and things I’ve applied to my game, right? But if you walk up to a hole and you say, don’t hit it left, you’d be surprised how many times you end up hitting it left, because your brain almost doesn’t hear the word don’t, right? You have to get very focused on targets.
And look, a lot of obviously this conversation revolves around the app and why I built the app or how the app can help people. But like I literally have built and tuned this thing based on my learnings with selfishly trying to help myself play better golf. That’s a big part of the journey. And one of the things I learned is you got to be super focused on target. You just can’t tell yourself what not to do. Going back to the three foot putt, I’ve walked into a three foot putt and said, don’t miss this, don’t pull this. And then you’re surprised by how many times you pulled it. And you’re like, well, why, of course. Your brain was literally just saying what you didn’t want to do, not what you wanted to do.
And it’s the, I’m sure I’m not the first person on your podcast to mention the pink elephant thing, right? But somebody says pink elephant, you can’t help but visualize a pink elephant. Someone says don’t think about a pink elephant. You can’t do it. You just thought about a pink elephant. Even though I said don’t think about a pink elephant, because your brain can’t understand the don’t. It’s the same way with golf targets. If you walk up and say don’t hit it left, you’re way more likely to hit it left than you were before or off the planet right because you overcompensate.
I think one of your recent guests was talking about like the power of the subconscious. Again, studying neuroscience, the subconscious is so fascinating to me. I think one of these experiments that I did for a while that actually kind of helped me get out of some troublesome tee shots, right, is we’ve all had that experience where let’s say you got water all down the left and you don’t want to go into the water on the left. So you block the thing way off to the right, right? Off the planet right to avoid the water. But I think a lot of us also had the opposite experience where you got the water down the left and so you aim so far right that now your subconscious is saying, I’m aimed too far right. And you end up pulling it left into the water. So you almost overcompensated so much that the subconscious flips on you. Instead of being afraid of the water, now it’s afraid that you’re aimed too far right and you get the opposite effect and either of those are detrimental, right? They’re not good.
For a while, I did this experiment that actually worked quite well. If I was afraid of the water on the left, I would actually aim a little bit uncomfortably towards the water on the left, right? Because I know that my subconscious doesn’t want to go there and it’s going to push me away, right? But I didn’t aim so far away that when it pushes me away, I’m either out of bounds right or do the opposite, right? So like just a little bit uncomfortable, right? And then allow yourself to say, I mean, you’d almost, what I would say, like prod the subconscious, because you’d always be telling yourself, yeah, I’m aimed too close to the water here. I know I’m aimed too close to the water here. And then just let the subconscious do what it’s going to do. And it’s going to fight you. It’s going to force you to flare it or whatever and get kind of away from the water. But you avoid the big mistake, which is what you’re trying to do always is avoid big mistakes.
But yeah, that subconscious is a very, very powerful thing. I just saw something on Instagram the other day and I’m gonna get the attribution wrong, Cog Golfer or whatever, there’s this guy that I followed that I think says some very, very good stuff. But he gave a simple analogy for, in his case, he was talking about driving range versus on the golf course, but I think really it applies to anything like when it matters versus when it doesn’t matter. But the example he was giving is you’re walking down a sidewalk. It’s three, three and a half feet wide, whatever it is, right? You can walk down that sidewalk for 10 miles and never once are you gonna think or worry about what happens if I trip and fall in the grass, what happens if I miss the sidewalk and fall off of it, right? You’re just gonna walk down the sidewalk, never think about anything and it’s fine. That’s what the driving range is, right?
But if I took that same sidewalk and put it 100 feet in the air, suspended, you’re gonna think about a million things that you would have never thought of. It’s the same three and a half foot sidewalk. It’s the same exact walk. You would never fall off that sidewalk if you just walked down it. But as soon as I introduced the idea of pain or danger if you don’t do what you need to do, your brain actually is shifting what part of the brain is processing what you’re doing. Right? That’s what’s happening from a neuroscience level. It’s changing which part of the brain is guiding your body down that path to try to protect you. But in a golf aspect of it, it’s not really protecting you. It’s actually now using a part of the brain that’s not as good at hitting golf shots as the other part of the brain. It’s using a part of the brain that’s technically not even as good at walking down a sidewalk as the part of the brain that was doing it before. So how do you then reset and get back into that spot where it’s like, okay, I accept that there’s risk here, I could fall off this sidewalk, but I still want to use the part of the brain that’s really good at walking down sidewalks.
Anyway, one of my favorite books on neuroscience that kind of walks through some of this, it’s called On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. It’s a great book and it talks about like, let’s say you’re carrying something really heavy up the stairs. If you don’t think about it, you have no problem carrying this heavy thing up the stairs and getting to the top. But as soon as you think don’t trip, you’re like, I don’t know what the percentage is, but you’re significantly more likely to trip and fall on your face because you’ve introduced that moment of doubt and your brain is now gonna be thinking about don’t trip instead of just autopiloting up the stairs.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, your brain was like, I wasn’t thinking about tripping. Why? That wasn’t even an issue. And now you’ve brought it up. And that’s funny you say that. We just went to my wife’s grandma’s house to get like a toy chest thing. It’s super heavy. And of course in my pride I said, I don’t need help. I got this. So I’m walking it up the stairs. I’m doing great. Like I’m not thinking, I’m more thinking about how heavy this thing is. So I’m just like just get it up the stairs, get it up the stairs. And then my wife said, oh, he’s almost there or something like you’ve made it or something. And then all of a sudden I introduced kind of conscious thought into it. And I about lost it and fell backwards with this giant chest. The idea of, okay, now that I’m overthinking a very natural thing.
So in golf, our body, we’ve trained, that’s what practice is for, is to train our body to be able to do this thing automatically. And we can, just like a sidewalk, like we can walk down a sidewalk without even thinking about it. We can be on our phone and that’s a whole different conversation, might not do it super well, but you can do it subconsciously. So in golf, how do you bring, or what do you do with that relationship between 100 foot in the sky sidewalk and on the ground sidewalk, or range versus course? So when you get on the tee, the first tee, you’re hitting a driver just like you did 10 minutes ago on the range, but now it feels like the sidewalk’s 100 feet in the air. What do you do in those situations?
Dallas Webster
Yeah, it’s a good question. I try to rely, one, try to rely a lot on experience and remind myself that I’ve done this, I know how to do this, and then heavily rely on visualization. So I think of a lot of positive affirmation. I try to eliminate all the don’ts, right? And then I try to visualize what I wanted to go do and then just allow my body to do it. Now that’s easier said than done, right? But if you look at almost any other sport, or even just simple everyday life tasks. If I gave you a crumpled up piece of paper and said, throw this at the trash can, you’re not gonna think about what happens if I miss. You’re just gonna throw it in the trash can. So what happens in golf, the whole problem is you start thinking about what happens if I miss.
And I think the key thing for golf is if you choose a good target that allows your regular dispersion pattern to have success, right? It gives you some margin for error, because you’ve chosen a good target, you don’t have to be perfect. Then you can kind of get out of your own way and say, all I have to do is hit an everyday, run-of-the-mill shot, and I’m going to have a result that I can live with, because I’ve selected a good target and done everything I can to minimize that, and then just allow yourself to go do it.
But like, anecdotally, that’s difficult. So I can give you an example. I was playing in a tournament, I think it was October of last year, November of last year, and I’d just come off of one of my worst tournaments of the year. I’m going to play this golf course at Split Rail, and my dad is gonna caddy for me, right? So we’re getting this round, and I’m actually playing pretty good. I’m two or three under on the back nine, and my mind starts to go to, oh my gosh, I could break 70 today. And I think at that point, I don’t think I’d ever broken 70 in a tournament. I’d shot under par several times in tournaments, but I’d never shot under 70 in a tournament. And so my brain immediately goes to, oh my gosh, I’m playing great today, I got a chance to go break 70 today.
And we get to this par four. It’s almost a reachable par four, but it’s pretty narrow. There’s out of bounds left. You can kind of bail out right, but it’s a really tough up and down if you bail out right. It’s kind of a tough tee shot. And so my mind’s going to, okay, I want to hit driver. I feel good about driver. That’s a strength of mine. I’m starting to pick out my target. And my dad, who’s a higher handicapper, right? He’s kind of in the like high 90s kind of range golfer, but he gets up there and there’s this creek that wanders across the fairway. And he says, how far is it to cover that creek? And like, I had never even thought about the creek up until this point. That creek’s like 200 yards. It’s not even in play for like any tee shot I’m gonna hit. But all of a sudden now, I’m thinking about a creek that I had not thought about up until this point. And I’m kind of going through the motions to hit the golf shot, because I answered this question. But I’m standing over my golf ball and I look up and I see this creek and I’m thinking about, gosh, please don’t dump this into that creek.
That thought had never occurred to my mind until it got introduced by an outside force. In this case, it’s my dad who’s caddying for me. But yeah, so what do I do? I’m standing over there and all of a sudden I have this negative thought about don’t hit it in the creek, standing over a tee shot that’s tough without a bounce of laughter. There’s all this trouble that could happen. So what do I do? I backed off of it. I kind of laughed. I laughed and like addressed it. I was like, man, I really wish you wouldn’t have mentioned that creek. Kind of laughed it off. But then in my mind, I got refocused, I said, okay, I wanna hit this draw at that bunker, hit this, I’m gonna hit the driver, let’s hit that target, you’ve done this a million times, I stand over it, I’ve kind of in my mind seen it already happen, and now it’s like, okay, just do that. And ended up smoking a drive, hit it perfect, I was maybe 40 yards short of the green, chipped it up to a foot and made birdie on the hole, right?
It was kind of phenomenal, which, like, I think my specific journey in this case, a little interesting too, because I do record a lot of my golf for the company and whatnot. I have a YouTube channel called The Good Miss. So that round is posted on the internet for the world to see where I go have that shot. I think I even talk about that moment where my dad introduced the creek kind of in that video. That round was a particular kind of mental breakthrough for me, I would say, because I birdie that hole, and I think I birdie that hole to get to three under. So like three under through 14, and I’m like, man, if I just par out, I’ll break 70, right? And I have that realization, that thought, kind of in the middle of the round, and I immediately had to kind of take a step back and say, wait a minute, you still got five holes to play, or whatever, four holes to play, why are you thinking about breaking 70? Like, let’s go play this shot, play this shot. And I was able to pull myself and be present.
I think another thing that helped me in this particular round is one of the guys in this field was a younger college player who’s gonna try to go pro here shortly thereafter and he’s playing really good. Me and him were kind of battling back and forth. At that point I think I was three under and he was five under. But I ended up birdie-ing 17 to get to four under. 18 was a par 5 up the hill and I stuck it to like 6 feet. I had 6 feet for eagle that would have tied this guy and I didn’t end up making the eagle putt. I hit a good putt but it broke. Ended up making birdie there to shoot 67, which is my lowest round in a golf tournament.
And I kind of walked off and I was like, you know, through 14 holes, I went to that mode of protect. How do I just finish three under and get the 69? And you really have to kind of fight through that mental aspect. I would say, no, let’s just play golf and see what happens. You’re either gonna, maybe you’ll go low, maybe you won’t, but like you gotta keep focusing on each shot, hitting each shot really, really well. And then what’s fun is I get to track that in the app and I get to go watch that video and say, okay, look, now you’ve got some proof that you went and did it, fought through that. How do I then go continue to apply that and play better?
It’s maybe the other point that I’d make from a mental perspective is even having that breakthrough, it’s not easy. Shortly thereafter, I went through four to five months of some of the worst golf I’ve played in two to three years. I’ve been very public about my golf. My golf is on the internet. That’s a whole different set of mental challenges is when I’m recording. You know that a bunch of people are gonna go see that. A bunch of people, I’m trying to sell an app, I’m trying to say, I’ve used these techniques to help myself play better golf. And then when you go show that golf to the world, you’re a little bit exposed, right? Like, I wanna play well. It’s probably gonna be harder for me to convince you to go invest in this technology or this app if you’re watching me go the other way and go shoot big numbers and whatnot. But I think maybe there’s also a human element to that where it’s like, well, no, it is a journey, right? Golf is peaks and valleys. I’ve tracked almost every golf shot I’ve hit since 2016. And if you go look at it, I’ve been as low as like a plus two handicap in the system. But if you look at that, it’s not this linear progression to great. It’s peaks and valleys. And I struggled with probably the mental part of golf more so than I have in a while the first half of this year. And I’ve kind of climbed out of that in the recent two months. But yeah, it’s a grind. Even if you know what to go do, it’s hard to go do.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, and the human element that you’re describing, I mean that matches, that pairs really well with the, where you said he introduced the idea of the creek that you hadn’t even thought of, but you addressed it. You didn’t try to stuff it down. So for you as a public, putting out your game in public, it would be a much worse way to do it if you’re trying to pretend that you’re a better player and but you’re not really. Instead, I wish I was better. I’ve been better in the past, but I’m not right now. And I’m using this app because I’m not good, right? Basically, it’s not, this app won’t make you perfect at golf. It will help you be better from where you are, right?
Dallas Webster
Correct, right? It’s always kind of how you continue to work on things to improve from wherever your starting point is, right? So I think there’s a misnomer where some people look at an app, whether it’s shot tracking or golf GPS or our competitors and say, hey, I’m not good enough to use that app. I shoot a hundred. We have a ton of golfers who are shooting a hundred and tracking their shots and getting better from wherever they are in that journey. So if you start at that really high level, maybe you don’t want to track all mental scorecard and whatever. Maybe you’re struggling with other things first. Cool. It matches wherever you are on your journey. And to me, what makes golf the great game that it is, is it is all about that journey and you run into different roadblocks along the way that cause things to be challenging, right?
And that may be for me lately, it was kind of a mental struggle the early half of this year where I found myself, I’d made my golf even more public than it was before. The YouTube channel and some of that has been growing. So more and more people are seeing my golf, seeing it out there. I had a couple of like haters even pop up on TikTok that, you know, would see your golf swing and say, no way this guy’s scratch. And like, I could go point to whatever website I want with results. I’ve, you know, I went to Pinehurst. I’ve played some really good rounds. I could go point to all that. It doesn’t matter. You got haters on TikTok telling you that your swing is trash and there’s no way you’re that good. Early this year, that leaked in a little bit into what I was doing, where I was standing over putts and I’m thinking about that. That crosses your mind, it’s, I gotta make this, because I got these guys saying this or whatever, and you gotta find that way to kind of get out of that. Now, that’s not an issue that most people are gonna face, that’s fine, but everybody’s got kind of their own part of that journey that they’re struggling with.
And to me, what helps me get through those, I explain it a lot on the YouTube channel and with the app. It’s, okay, well, let me go back to basics. On that particular putt, let’s go analyze it. I either made the putt or I missed the putt. Let’s say I missed the putt. Why did I miss the putt? I would mark that as not being mentally committed. I was thinking about a TikToker and not thinking about making a three-foot putt. Okay, cool. So now, you just keep building that up to say, okay, obviously I need to go hit more three-foot putts to get, you know, more in tune with that, but then I also need to do some of these mental strategies of making sure I reset. I should have backed off that putt. I didn’t back off that putt. Should have backed off, thought about something else and did it. So kind of being very public about my journey and showing how I use it, right, is to kind of get people to embrace that.
I think these techniques of really good pre-shot routines and post-shot routines and trying to understand why things go bad is critical to your game improvement wherever you are. In fact, I think on the mental side of golf, I think that’s more impactful even for higher handicappers than most people realize. When I talk to my friends who are like 10, 15 handicappers and even higher than that, right? Like I think a lot of times they don’t give the mental side of the game enough credit. They’ll walk up there and hit a golf shot like straight top of driver and they’ll be like, yeah, you know that was just a bad swing. That’s like, you know, that’s within my dispersion for lack of a better word. That’s just a shot that I have in my bag. I’m like, I bet if you thought about it for real, you probably did something different there. Didn’t go through a great routine or like you didn’t just randomly top a ball for no reason as a whatever, 12 handicap. Like I think, I don’t think enough golfers really on the post shot side of the routine or post round part of the routine really think through, well no, I didn’t quite go through my routine there, or I was still laughing at the joke that my buddy told standing over that driver and didn’t give it full credit, but if you really look at what’s going on and what you’re thinking about going into a shot, trends pop up. That’s been my experience. And then you can go tackle the right things to get better.
Josh Nichols
Hmm. Yeah. Do you ever rate a good shot as bad mental game?
Dallas Webster
Yes, yeah, absolutely. I think, and you have to be careful about that. I’ve had, nobody can see what’s going on inside your head, right? So just because you have a negative thought doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to hit a bad shot. There are lots of times where I’m not committed and I still get away with it. Or I’m not committed and I hit it fat but it works out, right? Like it hits the slope right, it still goes to two feet. I’ve hit bad shots that got good results. You can hit good shots and get bad results. And so I try to be honest with myself anytime I have that lack of commitment. For sure, it’s easier to go mark something as uncommitted when the result is bad, but having a negative thought doesn’t guarantee a bad result and vice versa. But I do want to know, one of my goals is to get better at that commitment, to get better at that mental side. And so if you don’t mark the shots that had a good result as uncommitted, then you’re kind of missing a piece of the data that’s in that signature. And you’re missing the fact like, am I making progress on this goal of being committed to a golf shot?
Josh Nichols
Yeah, yeah, if you separate the two and just look at the mental part of it, forget what result it was tied to. Okay, 50% of my shots I was uncommitted. Whether or not some of those were good, that’s still a stat that you wanna improve.
Dallas Webster
Was I thinking about the right things? Did I go through my routine properly? All that kind of stuff, right? Because to me, it’ll be simple stuff. Maybe you’re going through your pre-shot routine and then all of a sudden your ear itches or something like that, right? Well, if that’s enough to take my attention away from the golf shot to go scratch my ear, then I want to make sure I’m resetting and going back through my routine. Is scratching my ear going to guarantee that I’m going to hit a bad shot? No. But sometimes it does distract you enough to where I’m not present at what I was doing, so I wanna get better at backing off and doing that.
I think one of the things I struggle with is I tend to be a pretty fast player and I’m a little self-conscious with slowing anybody down, especially sometimes when I have cameras out and I’m recording things. I definitely wanna be the fastest player in the group if I’m recording. But you can get into that moment to where you stand over a shot and you think you should back off and you have that little bit of hesitation where you’re like, should I back off or not back off? And like as soon as you have that thought, you should back off, right? But sometimes it’s hard because I don’t want to be slow. Maybe I backed off four shots ago and I don’t want them to think I’m crazy. I don’t want them to know what’s going on inside my head right now and reveal that. Resetting and hitting a better shot is almost always going to be faster than fighting through it and hitting a poor one where now you got to go find the ball that’s in the woods because you didn’t commit to it. So I got to constantly remind myself of that.
And then I’m sure I’m not the first one to say it, but I’ve heard this somewhere or maybe I did make it up. I don’t know, but I’ve never regretted backing off a shot. There’s never a single time that I’ve backed off and said I shouldn’t have done that. But I can think of a thousand times where I feel like I should have backed off and I didn’t. So yeah, it’s a funny game, right? You stand over there and try to fight through it. I can hit this shot even when you’re distracted. But yeah, that pre-shot routine, that commitment.
I’ve just noticed with some of my higher handicap buddies that I don’t think they give it as much credit as it deserves. I do feel like this game gets way more mental the better you get. Because, I mean, I’ve hit millions of golf balls. If you give me a random seven iron to go hit a target, I know what my dispersion pattern is for that seven iron. I know where it’s gonna go, hitting those million golf balls. But if you don’t go through your routine, if you get distracted, if whatever, I can chunk a seven iron 40 yards and look like a total fool. I’ve done that too.
Josh Nichols
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The mental, the mental is the biggest separator between, I think, you know, if you’re comparing yourself to another person of your same level, it’s almost always mental, right? Within your flight, it’s probably mental that’s determining who’s doing better. So yeah. Okay.
Dallas Webster
I think the only caveat to that I would give is I think target selection and course management factors in there as well, right? Those two things. I think once you get to a certain level, it’s those two things that really matter. You’ll see guys that both have the same quality of golf shots, same skill level, right? But if one guy is taking on flags he shouldn’t take on and the other isn’t, that’s another big separator. But I think those two are also tied together to me. How do you go get real smart about picking targets, targets that you can then commit to and execute to? And if you marry those things really, really well, then you’re in good shape. And from an app perspective, that’s one of the things we’re trying to do is really help with the target side. Give you targets to where if you commit to this, you’re going to optimize your chance for success and hopefully make it a little easier to commit to targets than otherwise it would be.
Josh Nichols
I absolutely agree. In general, just as a general rule of thumb, when I pick a target versus when I don’t pick a target, and this might sound really obvious, when I pick a target, it’s easier to be more committed than when I don’t pick a target. It’s really easy to be uncommitted. And as obvious as that sounds and as simple as that is, the amount of shots that I’ve hit where I was not picking a specific target or I put very little thought into where I want this ball to go, and the amount of times I’ve seen other people do the same. I mean, it’s probably 90% of golf shots hit worldwide forever in the history of golf. It has been shots where people weren’t really thinking specifically what they want this ball to do. They were kind of saying, okay, the flag’s 180, the front of the green is 160. I don’t know. I’ll hit a five iron cause it goes about 170 or something. And okay, there’s a little thought there, but man, that is not specific enough to narrow in.
Dallas Webster
That’s why layups are tough, right? That’s why layups are tough, because a lot of times you walk up and you’re like, man, I got this wide fairway, I’m just hitting a seven iron, and then you end up blowing it because you just didn’t give it enough thought. One of my good rounds on that tour that I was playing on, I shot four under on the going out, right? I had six birdies and two bogeys, and that up until that point was one of the best nines that I’d ever had. And we were playing this course in the Dallas area called The Tribute, which it’s a mock-up of all these famous holes over in Scotland and Ireland, right? So like 18 and number one are St. Andrews, right? So you get the widest fairway possible and we started on the back. So on the back, going out through 18, I’ve shot four under and the guys are looking at me like, holy cow, I mean the hole looks like a, whatever, sewer grid, huge, I’m making everything.
But I get to the first hole, which is the first hole at St. Andrews. It’s like the widest fairway you can imagine. You cannot miss this fairway. And I stood up over it and because of that, did not pick a specific target at all, kind of made just this lackadaisical swing and pump it into the burn on the right, which I could have hit it 100 yards left of where I hit it. And I hit the tee shot into the burn after going out in four under, and then where that hole becomes super mental, I called it a speed check after the fact because I’d been playing great, I pumped this one into the burn, that’s really dumb. I take the drop.
And I got like whatever, 80 yards to this hole now after taking the drop. And I was so kind of scared and uncommitted and like shocked to the system after making the first mistake that I chunked that wedge so bad it didn’t even make the burn on the next shot, right? Like it ended up short of the water the second time. Like, man, my head’s spinning and this was a while ago, but still it can tell you how like you can let one thing steamroll into a couple things. I won’t say that I’ve gotten perfect, but I have gotten better at this type of stuff.
It starts to go really, really fast and you start to think about the wrong things. I’m standing over that next shot, so whatever, I’m one in, two out, I’m sitting three, and I got this little chip over the burn, hit a great one to two feet. So now I got this two footer to save bogey after making the colossal mistake, and I walked up over that two footer and basically told myself, you don’t deserve to make this, and I missed the two footer. I ended up making double. So after shooting four under on one side, I double that hole.
I did get the wheels on and shot even the rest of the way, ended up shooting two over in the tournament total. But like that hole, I look at it and, what, one mistake turned into really three, right? I made the one mistake hitting the drive, then I chunked the next wedge, kind of reset and hit a great one to two feet, but I stood over that two footer and said, you don’t deserve to make this. And sure enough, I missed it. I mean, it might not have even been two feet. This was like one of the closest. It was embarrassing after the fact, but in retrospect, you look at it and you’re like, yeah, you kind of let one thing speed everything up and you didn’t take the opportunity to stop and slow down, get out of the embarrassed part. I was so embarrassed by the first shot that I, you know, complicated and kind of doubled down on it. And that’s what golf will do to you. How do you get out of those spaces and how do you keep getting better at that?
Josh Nichols
Yeah, that hole was a mental case study all on its own.
Dallas Webster
Yeah, yeah, I’ve got a few of those. Yeah. Like I said, I talk about battling demons, right? You get that voice in your head that says, either you don’t deserve this or this is gonna go bad. Like, that’s me. I don’t know. I assume lots of people have, you know, maybe they don’t call it demons or whatever, but you have that voice inside your head that says, this isn’t gonna go well or you don’t deserve it. And it’s like, okay, how do you just take a step back? Accept that but then get refocused on what you’re trying to do. I think that’s what works for me the best and that’s where Tangent helps or whatever else is I step back and say okay, what am I trying to do? What is my target? What does that look like and then just let your body do that. My body knows how to hit golf shots. My body knows how to make two-foot putts. The only time I’m not making that two-footer is if I get in my own way. So let the part of the brain that’s good at that handle that and you’ll be better off.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. I love it. Okay, let’s kind of bring us home on this one. As someone who does not like to interact with technology while playing, like you said, you’re an app developer, you’re probably in front of a computer quite a bit. I’m in front of a computer, I’m in front of screens constantly, we’re barraged by our phones, right? So I don’t like interacting with technology. When I go to the golf course, it’s an opportunity to get away from that. What, how can I use Tangent along with that desire of mine?
Dallas Webster
Yeah, perfect. So I would recommend, I think our Apple Watch app is the best golf app on the market. So if you want it to be as hands-free as possible, get you an Apple Watch with the Tangent Golf app. And what it’s going to allow you to do is to basically just play. We have swing detection in the Apple Watch. We do all that in the background. So you basically start a round, and then you can put your phone in the golf cart, in your golf bag, in your back pocket, wherever you want it, and you play. And what’s going to happen is as you play that round of golf, every time you take a swing, the system is going to record that shot, that location. It’s going to use our AI to make a guess at what club you hit. If you need to change that club, you can either do it after the round or you can do it right then from your watch. It takes two seconds. But you’re then engrossed in the game.
Now the benefit that you’re going to get is you may not want to be heavily engrossed in technology, but if you get to a tee shot that’s interesting to you or you get to a shot where you don’t quite know what to hit, you got the AI caddy right there that can help you actually make those decisions. So it’s going to help you there. You need distances to the hole anyway, so whether you’re a laser rangefinder guy or not, you got all the distances and stuff you need at a glance at your watch to help you get committed to those shots, right? I’ve got this much to the back, I’ve got this whatever to go hit it if you want to use it. But it’s going to do all that tracking and all the fun stuff without you touching it at all, right? And then the only thing that you have to do in our system is to put in your scores. Whether you want to do that after each hole or whether you want to wait to do it after the round, you can do it right from your wrist as you walk off the green.
I usually putt out, everybody else is putting, two seconds. You can go watch any of my videos and see how I use it. You’re not gonna see me fumbling around with phones and technology and that kind of stuff, because I don’t enjoy it either. But I’ll put my score in after the hole or after the round, and that’s literally all, the only thing you have to do is start a round in the app and then put your score in either during or after the round. For some people that play like high level tournament golf, and if you have a good golf memory, I’m either blessed or cursed with the ability to remember almost every shot I hit for like years on every golf course, it’s bad. But if you have a decent golf memory, you can actually not use the app at all on the golf course and you can put it in after the fact at home, right? It’s really easy. It’s a GPS based solution. You can say, okay, I played, I shot an 83 today. And you can pull out your phone and just, you’ll put in your scores and then move the shots around and you can do it without being on the golf course at all.
For sure we, look, that’s why I designed it in the first place is cause I don’t like them. I don’t like being distracted by technology. If technology is additive and it helps me, like the AI caddy, I’m all in. I want that. But if it’s taking me away from what I’m trying to do because I’m getting frustrated trying to edit something or move something or whatever, no, we don’t want any of that. So the app allows you to not touch it. But the Apple Watch is the best solution. We’ve got some things in the pipe to continue to make it easier for people that don’t like to wear watches. I was an anti-watch guy before I started this journey. I actually bought an Apple Watch solely for app development to go do this part of it and then ended up falling in love with it and I’ll never play golf again without it.
Yeah, I recommend the Apple Watch if you can swing that. It does make it super hands-free to where you can focus on golf. And you still get the AI caddy and all that fun stuff with it. You can go as deep as you wanna go with Tangent. I think that’s one of the things that separates us, whether you’re trying to tackle a mental scorecard, whether you’re working on strike, like where do you hit it on the face, whatever you’re doing, we tackle all of that so that you can get as much information as you need to really take you where you wanna go on your game improvement journey.
Josh Nichols
I love it. Well Dallas, this has been a pleasure. Obviously Tangent app would be where you would send people. Is there anything else you want to kind of floor yours to tell people where to go or where you would send people?
Dallas Webster
Yeah, I greatly appreciate this opportunity coming on. I love talking about kind of my journey and why I got into this. I’m super passionate about game improvement. That’s why I built the app. That’s why I do what I do. I want to help as many people play better golf. So you can go to tangent.golf to see our website. We are on the iOS app store, so you can also search Tangent Golf on the Apple app store. We are Apple only at the moment. We’re working to get to the Android side, hopefully later this year, early next year. But that’s the main thing. Go download the app. It’ll feed you to all of our other content.
And then you can check out my golf journey at The Good Miss. So The Good Miss on YouTube or The Good Miss on Instagram, whatever you wanna go do. It’ll show you my journey, it shows a lot of how I use the app, and it shows a lot of some of the stuff that I’ve talked about, target selection, the mental game, how I’ve struggled with it, how I get through it, and how I use all of this to play my best golf. And it’s worked for me. Like I said, I’ve gone from a six handicap to my best has been about a plus two. I’m gonna try to qualify for the US Mid-Am this year. So that’s playing, you know, a completely different level of golf than I’m used to. But yeah, that’s what this journey’s all about. I’m trying to see how good I can play and using technology to do it. I hope yourself and your listeners will do that as well.
Josh Nichols
Sweet, when’s your qualifier?
Dallas Webster
July 21st.
Josh Nichols
Okay, two weeks as of the recording of this episode. Alright, you feel good? Feel good about it?
Dallas Webster
Yeah, and so I’m hitting the ball honestly better than I ever have. I need to eliminate mistakes, the Tangent Four. I’ll still have that double that creeps in or whatever and kind of gets me into trouble. But my good golf is as good as it’s ever been. It’s been solid. I went to Bandon about a week ago and shot 67 at Pacific Dunes. That was fun. We caught her with perfect wind. Like it was absolutely phenomenal conditions, but my good golf has been good. I got to eliminate kind of the big mistakes.
If you do go check out The Good Miss, I got a video where I did a Texas AM qualifier that did not go so well just recently. That’s maybe a whole episode in terms of how I grinded really well for about 10 or 11 holes and then that’s one of the rounds where I let myself get very, very frustrated and the round kind of came apart and I beat myself up, I think. Sorry, we’re wrapping up. But like, that’s one of the things I’ve learned from the mental game is I’ve left too many tournaments where I got to a point in the round where I got frustrated and let it steamroll. And then you end up having this whole round where you look back at it and you’re frustrated and disappointed with yourself. Like I didn’t stay committed to the process. I didn’t finish it all the way to the end. And I don’t like how that feels when I’m done. So how do I go get better at that so by the time I get to 13 and the wheels are coming off, I can go redirect it and save that round.
And I’ve done a much better job of that in general, but that Texas Am, I hadn’t played greens tricked up quite like that, and it was a little bit of a mental undoing. But I play a tournament at Chambers Bay this weekend, or this next weekend, so that’ll be the big tester. If I can go play well at Chambers Bay for two days, then I’ll be all set for the mid-am.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. Okay. Well, best of luck. If you need, if I can help you in any way between now and then please ask me. I’m happy to help, but that’s, that’s exciting, man. Good stuff, Dallas. I appreciate your time. This has been a real pleasure.
Dallas Webster
Yeah, enjoyed it Josh, love it. Thanks for having me on. Take care.
