Podcast Transcript
**Josh Nichols**
Coach Chalice, what does it take to get recruited?
**Bruce Chalas**
Good morning. Thanks for having me on your show, Josh. Appreciate it very much. I’m a big fan of the mental golf show, as you know. Great question. I get asked that a lot of times. I’m never sure I really have the right answer for that either, but to get recruited, three components.
I mean, the reason why coaches are talking to players is because of the players golf skill. That’s the original entry, you might say, into meeting the players. So initially what the player shoots in tournament competition. And maybe the second has to do with academics. Where are you at for grades? Not quite sure I have that order. Might be in the reverse order. But the introduction is the golf. And the second leads into, clearly, your academics. What kind of courses are you taking? What are your grades?
Are you taking AP courses? Are you taking honor courses? And then, that’s probably 25 % each. 25 % golf, 25 % grades. For me, it’s 50%. Who are you? Who are you? Are you able to manage your own life? Can you make your own decisions?
And it really boils down to the transition from high school, prep school, into college is huge, especially if you’re playing a sport, in this case golf, which takes a lot of time for sure. But are you able to manage your life in a new environment that has an incredible amount of distractions?
So a college is obviously a great opportunity in one’s life. But can you manage your own life? Can you make your own decisions in a new environment with a lot of new people around you with a lot of distractions? Are you able to do that? And really, I think that’s what so many coaches might be looking for. You’re able to make that adaption, that change, and how quickly can you make that change into a new environment.
**Josh Nichols**
Yeah, it’s been now what 15, 16 years since I started college and, you know, add two years to that for the recruiting process. So it’s been a while with that in mind, but one of the biggest changes was not, you know, there’s more kids here or it’s a bigger school or the golf itself is different or the coaching—that wasn’t, none of those were the biggest change. It was time management.
It was, I love what you said, managing your own life. I seriously struggled managing my own life because college plus college golf, I mean, that’s basically two full-time jobs or at least two part-time jobs or a full-time and a part-time, whatever. So managing your own life is massive. So how can you tell a player is good at that?
**Bruce Chalas**
It’s always hard. I tend to take my time. I tend to go slow in the process. Not only just because of myself, I want to make sure it’s a good fit. It’s a good fit for the player. The player is happy with the university and the college, happy with the new team, the new coach, the new environment, the studies, making friendships.
The work that you’ve got to do in college, and the social time too. Being able to manage all that. I mean, a typical day in season, especially when it’s really busy, might be workouts Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. Quick shower, hurry to class, a couple of classes in the morning. Then the rest of day, you’ve got homework, you’ve got study groups, you’ve got presentations, golf meetings, golf practice, golf tournaments, tournament travel time. Travel time can be three, three and a half, can be four days sometimes depending upon how far teams are traveling. So there’s a lot of time away from school, especially in season. And practicing, practicing on your own, practicing with the team, it’s a full day. Being able to manage all of that, and again, from high school to prep school, coming to college, you’ve got to be able to have the skill, the determination, the desire to want to make that all work. And plans are always changing. You’ve got to be flexible and fluid with your plans. Things happen. Things happen during the day. All timelines to leave and return and activity timelines might change during that. So you’ve got to be flexible to that. A golfer is probably going to miss probably 18 to 20 days of class a year. And it’s because of traveling, tournaments, lot of tournaments on Mondays and Tuesdays. Let’s say an average golf program plays nine, ten, eleven tournaments a year. Many of them are on Mondays and Tuesdays and there’s a couple of days each tournament there plus the travel time on the other end. So there’s a lot of time missed and you’ve got to be a good student. You’ve got to keep up with your grades. You’ve got to do well in school. If you start falling behind in school or study groups…
It’s a lot of pressure, a lot of issues you got to deal with. And it affects your golf game for sure. Clearly it affects your golf game.
**Josh Nichols**
Yeah, and the 18–20 whatever days that you miss because of tournaments you have to preemptively prepare to miss those days. You have to study during time when you’re at home because you’re gonna miss studying time there. You got to do homework here because you can’t do it there. You have to study while you’re on the road in the hotel with distractions with zero desire to do it, in the bus, van, plane, whatever it is. You have to use all this time and the amount of focus and discipline that takes is way underrated. I work with several junior players. It’s all about, I need to get my golf game good. My academics are fine, I’m a smart kid, whatever, I get good grades. I just need to work on my golf game. So they think of that like 90 % golf game, 10 % academics, they don’t even think about managing their own life. They’re, you know, frankly, their parents are probably managing their life.
Yeah, that’s an underrated part.
**Bruce Chalas**
A couple of issues actually that have actually added to the equation, you’re making a lot of great points. But in recent years, in the last few years especially, if you’re at a school and the team, if you’re in the northeast or the northern part of the country and you’re flying a lot, you might be flying a little bit in the fall, but certainly in the springtime. Certainly if you’re in the northern part of the United States, you’re going to be flying south to play at tournaments and plane delays are a major issue. It’s almost a given that on a round trip, a round trip flight to a tournament site, it’s not going to be on time. And especially on the last day of the tournament, you’re taking the last flight out and that return to campus at 11 or 12 at night might be two or three and it might be the next morning. It could be with the way flights are. And the next morning you’ve got classes scheduled early in the morning. Maybe you’ve got a workout in the morning. It can really be an incredible amount of pressure and reorganization on the players to be able to make the workouts, to be able to make the classes. Workouts, you can probably, if you get into the return of campus too late at night, you can maybe adjust the timeline there, but classes, you can’t adjust the timeline. And the expectation is that you don’t miss classes, and you do go to classes just because you’re away traveling on a golf tournament. That’s a major factor.
Flying, you’re probably not going to return to campus on time. Just the way the airline and the situation is these days.
**Josh Nichols**
Yeah, you got to build in flexibility to your own adaptability, right? So what could a, you know, maybe a 14 year old is listening to this, 14, 15, 16 year old is listening to this or the parent of a junior golfer is listening to this. How could they prepare? If this is the biggest chunk of what you’re looking for in a player is who are you? How can you manage your life? How can either the parent help the kid or how can the kid work on this? It just, yep, you’re just a good kid, your parents raised you well, you just have, you know, you kind of lucked your way into being, kind of checking that box of who are you, or is there a way that you can improve, juniors can improve?
**Bruce Chalas**
Well, I certainly don’t want to be telling parents how to be parents. I mean, I’ve got a 41-year-old daughter and a 39-year-old son playing college golf. And I certainly don’t want to be in the parent advice department. But a good tip will be, which I do mention to parents and players when I talk to them, they come to my camps in Pine Forest during the summertime, I do mention to them, let your son or daughter do this whole process.
All of it on their own as soon as possible. And you just mentioned 14 years old. Is that too early? Nope, that’s a good age to get started. It’s important for the player to, for the student athlete, to be able to do this whole process on their own. Are they going to talk to their parents? Of course they’re going to talk to their parents about the options that they have, how things are going, finances, travel time, whatever it is. But the player needs to be invested themselves. They need to be finding the school. They need to be going on the website looking at the schools. Do they want to go to a school in the city? Do I want to go to a school more in the suburbs? Do they want a big school, a small school, northern school, a southern school? They’ve got to be making these decisions themselves and this way the player gets to learn more about the school and learn to be more emotionally involved with what the school has to offer both academically and golf. If the player’s not making these decisions, not doing this research and not making these decisions, well, it still works, but I think it’s a lot harder. And if the player doesn’t do the research, that might be an indication there too that the player might not be that interested, either in that school or that golf team or whatever. If you want something in life, you’ve got to go after it. I mean, nothing more disappointing when you’re talking to a recruit. You say, well, tell me your tournament schedule and they say, well, hang on a second. Say mom, where am I playing next summer? I mean, it’s so… well it means that the player may not be as invested in that schedule as possible. And tell me the courses you’re taking next school year. Hang on dad. What am I taking? What am I taking for math next year? Everyone needs to realize that the coaches are actually recruiting the players. They’re not recruiting the parents. And I say that hopefully, hopefully okay, but it is true. It goes back to how much time, emotion, how much time is the player investing on helping themselves get to the spot they want to be in college, for academics, for golf? How much time are they putting in studies? How well do they want to do in their studies? I think there’s a great correlation between how well you do in your academics and how well you do in golf. How you prepare for your academics correlates with how you prepare for golf. If you’re sloppy and you’re kind of last-minute Joe in academics, you’re probably going to be practicing that way, which is not really what many coaches are looking for. But on the other hand, if you put a lot of time into your academics, you’re organized, you get extra help, you get tutored, you want to do well, you want to excel in academics, that’s how probably you approach golf, and that’s what many coaches are looking for. I like a player that is taking honor courses, AP courses, to challenge themselves as opposed to taking a lighter schedule just to fluff up the GPA. That really doesn’t work. Admission departments see through that and coaches see through that too. So you want to take as many AP honor courses, difficult courses, challenge yourself. Probably that’s the way you can be practicing and approaching golf. Golf’s not easy. Golf’s a hard activity. It’s a really hard activity. A really hard activity. That’s very challenging. I guess that’s the attraction is probably why we do it because it’s such a challenge.
**Josh Nichols**
Sure. So, you know, the phrase take ownership comes to mind, right? Take personal responsibility. If the kid is taking responsibility. So would you rather see a player, a kid, in your case a junior girl, would you rather see them take hard classes and get worse grades or take easier classes and get good grades?
**Bruce Chalas**
Well, and by the way, at the camps I do in the summertime, boys and girls too. It doesn’t matter either way, same one either way. You want to take courses that challenge you, that you have a chance to do well in. And if you’re struggling, just to go back what you’re saying, maybe harder courses that you’re not doing well in. Well, if you’re not doing well in, you can get help.
You can help your professor, help your teacher, tutor, extra time in. You can succeed. You should be able to succeed in courses. You want to be able to take courses that you’re gaining knowledge in that’s gonna help move you forward in your educational career. I always put education ahead of golf, by the way, even though you and I, we love golf. We’re here at the golf show. We’re doing the mental golf show. We love golf, but…
The pathway to getting on a golf team and doing well on a golf team is through academics. It’s the academics first, which gets you to the golf place that you want to get at. I probably get 100, 120, 100, 125 emails a year from players that are contacting me for spots on the team. And I think that number is about right on most coaches. But when players open up a lot about I just shot 73, 74 and that’s the beginning and the end of their email. That’s not enough. You want to know about more of the academics. So to go back to your question, you want to take courses that are challenging you to get you to the next step.
**Josh Nichols**
And I love what you’re saying. Just because you’re doing poorly does not mean you have to stay doing poorly. Part of the taking ownership is I’m struggling so I need to find a way to do well. It is so interesting when my junior players talk about the academic side of it. They’re all… the first thing they’re thinking of is they tell me their GPA, right? I’m saying, okay, how you doing in school? And they’ll say, I’m good. I got a three nine and a hand. So I’m good. That’s the first thing they say. Just like you said, they’ll open their email with their score in a tournament, but there’s a layer deeper of, you getting a three nine in bottom level easy stuff? And in my case, I was getting bad grades at the easy stuff, but how much are you pushing yourself to do that?
So as a coach recruiting, how much do you investigate that or what do you ask to investigate that?
**Bruce Chalas**
When I get a phone call or I get a text message or an email, the first thing I go to right away, SATs and courses right away. Because if that doesn’t work, if the academics doesn’t work, that player’s not gonna be admissible. So who cares what they shoot? You’re not admissible.
You cannot be admitted. And the golf, there’s no golf conversation. So I go right to SATs. I go to GPA a bit. I mean, GPA’s nice. It’s okay, but there’s a lot of good GPAs out there. I go to grades. I want to know, are you taking honor courses? Are you taking AP courses? What did you get in the SATs? What did you get in the ACTs? For international players, which I deal with a lot of internationals, your TOEFL score?
Just now that we mentioned academics and SATs here, most universities and colleges now have become test optional, although that’s coming back. And that’ll be back in full probably in the next two to four years that will be back. However, even though schools are test optional, I always encourage the players to take SATs and ACTs. If you’re a good student, you’re going to want to enhance your resume. You’re going to want to put as much excellent academic information on there as possible.
Test optional to me is nice for mediocre or poor students, or students that don’t have interest in academics. A top academic student is going to want to take the SATs to separate themselves from the crowd, you might say. So I think it’s important to take SATs, take ACTs, take TOEFL to do well in those. That is a difference maker. All the universities you can play as can go to the websites and look to see what average entrance scores are academically, both GPA, SATs and ACTs, and that can give them a little bit of a start on whether they might work at that particular school or not. Same thing in golf scores. You can go and look at the golf scores and check that out. You need to be, it’s very competitive out there, you need to be a very good student. You need to be someone that can do your homework and get your work done properly and good grades in order to succeed in college golf. Sounds like so far in this podcast, it sounds like I might be giving more on the academic side than the golf side, but it’s an important piece. We can’t get to the golf side until you get past the academic side. It’s kind of heartbreaking. I generally in summertime see a lot of top students. But I do see periodically students who are really good players and who just didn’t put the time in academics. And it’s really heartbreaking to see players in their junior, senior year. And you just know they’re not going to be able to go to the schools they want. And it’s not because of the golf. It’s because of their academics. And so they’ve worked hard all their life with the golf, but maybe could have worked a little bit more effectively in their academics. And just what you said a few minutes ago about your players come to you and it’s golf, golf, golf. Actually, it’s academics and then it’s golf. And you’ve got to be able to do both. It’s not easy doing both. Again, we go back to your organizational skills, how well you’re able to manage your life and to be able to get the work done.
**Josh Nichols**
Yeah, and you’re a student athlete, right? One, you’re both, but also you’re a student first and then an athlete. As much as we care and love the athletic side of it, you are a student athlete. You’re student first.
**Bruce Chalas**
That’s a great point Josh, you are a student athlete, you are not an athletic student. You are not, there’s a huge difference.
**Josh Nichols**
Yeah, and in my case I wasn’t an athletic athlete either, anyway, so you mentioned players looking at scores of the golf team. So this is something I hear a lot too. They’ll say, yeah, I was looking at Boston University’s golf team and their average scores in tournaments are whatever, not average, but like, yeah, she shot a 77 and she’s on the team. She traveled. I can shoot 77 at a tournament. Is there something flawed with that thinking?
**Bruce Chalas**
Yeah, sure, of course, naturally. A lot of factors. When you’re going to let’s back up a little bit going. Let’s say we’re going to the golf websites of the different universities. Go to the golf website. Look at the roster. Look at the makeup of the team. Look how many on the team. I mean, typically a division one team might have eight players on a division three team tend to be a little bit larger. They might have 12 or 14 players on it. So and by the way, division one or three, leave yourself wide open. It doesn’t really matter whether you’re playing division one, two, or three. What matters is you’re going to a good school, you’re learning, and you’re being able to play on the golf team, be able to travel and not just sit around. So getting back, rosters typically might have eight, division three might have 12 or 14. Look at the size of the roster. Look to see where the players come from. Are they all over the world? Are they just U.S.? Is it a combination of both, how would you fit into that group emotionally? Looking to see where the group of players might come from. Is it an older group? Is it a younger group? I mean, there’s one of the top teams in the country, they don’t really recruit anyone under 20 years old and all international. And so you might want to see something like that and see if you would fit. Look and see at the schedule where they play. Are they playing, if you’re in the New England area, let’s say, you’re playing Division III, that might be more of a Saturday, Sunday schedule. And it might be more two, three hour van rides as opposed to other teams that might be flying around the country. That means extra days off from school having to travel to and from. So look at the golf schedule, see where they travel. Go to the golf scores, look at the scores.
In a general sense, that team is a 300 team, for instance, and you play five count four, if that team’s a 300 team, that means the average player was shooting 75. So let’s say the score is 72 to 76, 72 to 77 might be the range. And what are you shooting? If you’re shooting 75, 76, 77, yeah, well that can work, that might work. If you’re shooting 85, that might be a bit of a gap and it probably isn’t going to work. The hardest thing is to be real.
Where are you today? Not where you want to be, not where you’re going to be, not where your coach said you’re going to be, not where your mom said you’re going to be, but where are you today? What is your GPA? What is your grade average? What are your grades? What is your course load? What do you shoot? And what do you shoot on 6,000 yards for the women and the guys 6,800? A little bit of a challenge there in junior golf.
They might be playing 54, 55, 5600 yards. So there’s a little bit of factoring that has to be involved in it. So as a junior player, hopefully you’re playing in as many tournaments for the guys at 6800 and the women at 6000 as possible. That would give you a good idea of where you would fit. A lot of this you can do yourself. It’s surprising the people that I do talk to, they find the recruiting process to be overwhelming and confusing, you can do a lot of this yourself. Just as we said a few minutes ago, go to the website, look at the school, what are the academic requirements, it’s a bell curve, how close are you to those requirements. Same thing on the golf. And getting back, using the team of shooting 300 example.
Look to see what all the players are shooting one through eight or one through 12, whatever it is and compare yourself to players one and two. Don’t compare yourself with players four, five, six, seven and eight. Compare yourself one or two. Ideally, coaches are trying to bring in players that hopefully can push the whole lineup down. That’s how the team going to get better. So when you see someone on the team shooting 82 and you say, my God, I can shoot 82 well.
That’s on 6,000 yards and if it’s the springtime, maybe the weather wasn’t so good and 50, 55 degrees with high winds and plus the challenges of college, a little bit different than shooting the same score from 5500, 5600 yards. Quite a bit of a difference there. So try to picture yourself, where do you stand realistically on your score with players one and two, maybe player three. But team average, players one and two up top, how does your game fit? And you’ve got to match yourself on the appropriate yardage too. That’s a major consideration.
**Josh Nichols**
Yeah, distance is massive. I mean, just, you know, every hundred yards that you take off is maybe a half a stroke of scoring average that it makes such a difference when you’re playing from 60, 61 as a junior girl. You know, these days, junior boys and state level, certainly US level, they’re getting up close to 7,000 as long as these kids can hit it. So playing tournaments that are at full length and you’re shooting the scores, then it’s like, okay, I can go on this team. And that what you’re saying is absolutely key. Okay, just because I shot a 77 and she shot a 77 does not mean I could just take her place. There is pressure.
I mean, like we’re talking about managing your life time management, the difficulty of time management and performing at a golf tournament compared to junior golf in the summer or something when weather is great, nothing else going on in life. It’s just not apples to apples.
**Bruce Chalas**
A lot of college tournaments are playing 36-18. They play 54-hole events, which is great. And a lot of teams are playing 36-18 for a couple of reasons. One reason is they don’t have to miss as many class days with a 36-18 as an 18-18-18, course accessibility, cost of participating in the tournament. So there’s a lot of reasons why schools are playing 36-18. But let’s think about that. When you play 36-18, let’s assume you tee off at 8:30 in the morning on each day. So when you’re playing 36-18, you are playing three rounds of competitive golf in 30 hours, pushing a 28-pound cart. Now, I don’t think many juniors have played three rounds of competition in 30 hours. And if you throw the practice round in, four rounds, you’re actually playing four rounds in 42 hours. That’s an incredible amount of…
I mean, three tournament rounds in 30 hours, you have to be in shape for that. You have to be organized for that, be in good physical shape for that. And that’s something that really is never really much thought about. When I mentioned to the girls, or the guys, just when you’re playing 36, 18 in college, that’s three rounds of competitive golf in 30 hours. That’s not much time.
**Josh Nichols**
Yeah, the physical fitness, the mental fortitude and resilience that that takes to, you’re on the 30th hole of the 36th hole day. Do you still have it? Do you still have your focus nutrition-wise, hydration-wise? Are you still dialed that deep into the day? That’s a skill. And is that something that you can look for in a recruit? Do you get a sense of, I bet she could do that or…
**Bruce Chalas**
Well, I mean, I certainly ask for what kind of a strength and conditioning routine you want now. And boy, you better be on a strength and conditioning routine, certainly in high school, to get yourself ready for college. I actually ask, what do you do for mental skills? I ask about that. And a lot of times, I maybe not get any response at all, only because players are just not aware of how important the mental game is. Mental game is, mental game for me at the collegiate level is more important.
Well, let’s say in practice, if I have, and there are situations at times during the year, depending upon how players are playing, whether they’re playing well, they’re not playing well, pressures of the school or whatever, I’ll always go to trying to talk to them about their mental game. Are you ready to play? Oh yeah, I’m ready to play. Well, how are you eating? Oh, not so good. How are you eating? And I maybe see a candy bar in front of me. And how are you sleeping? Fine, I’ll go to bed two in the morning. Okay, probably not gonna work.
But how do you feel about yourself? How do you feel about your game? And I’m not playing well or this or that. I actually have enough experience to know that many times, rather than go to a practice.
I might cancel the practice or I might cancel the practice of the player. I might sit down at Starbucks for an hour, an hour and a half. Let’s see what’s going on. This comes under the heading of tournament preparation, but it’s more mental skills. And more positive can come with that approach than pounding balls mindlessly without a purpose. And kind of coupled with that too, if I can say…
That would be like someone saying they hit a ball out of bounds and the way to cure that is to go hit 100 drivers. Well, maybe not so. You might need to be talking or getting back to the mental side of golf. The mental side of golf, as we know, is so important, and it’s important for the coach and the player to learn where the player is in terms of readiness to play and how they feel about themselves playing. It’s a lot.
You’re the player. I tell the players, I mention you’re the player. You’re the coach. You’re the cheerleader and you are the critic and you are all rolled into one. It’s so easy to criticize, find fault with what we do when we play. It’s hard to criticize play going back to mental skills.
Freshmen, just maybe get off a little bit. I might mention the recruits freshmen, freshmen that are coming in. I always ask the freshmen, get the little red book.
Harvey Penick, Arthur Harvey Penick. Also get the Little Green Book written by Harvey Penick. Those are two really easy, simple golf books to read. 12 bucks I think on Amazon, maybe 45 minutes to an hour to get through each book. Fun reading. I would say they’re mental approach instructional books if that makes any sense. They’re not swing the club books. They’re not how to swing the club. But they do talk about in a lighthearted way, playing golf, the mental skills needed, see the flag, see the flag waving in the wind and not the bunkers or the water, just an example. But those two books I think are really fun reading books to help players get off to a good start on being aware of their mental skills needed. Third book I ask players to read, and I might do it halfway through the career to reread it again, is Your Fifteenth Club by Bob Rotella. A great mental skill book. So these are three books that I ask the players to read. They have nothing to do with swinging the golf club, but they’ve got everything to do with how you’ll swing the golf club.
**Josh Nichols**
When you’re out watching players and you’re on a recruiting visit to a tournament or something, players always say, coach doesn’t care how I play, they care how I carry myself, how I present myself. How much truth is there to that?
**Bruce Chalas**
Well, you always care about a player plays. You want players to play well, it doesn’t always happen. Well, I think when you’re watching a recruitment tournament, I mean, for me, I’m looking for fundamentals. I’m a grip guy for sure. And you’ve got to have a good grip. Don’t think if you don’t have a good grip with me, it might be all over. But I’m a grip guy, a good grip. I look for good fundamentals, good posture.
Your swing plane at the top at impact. You know, you’re taking video, you’re looking at the video when you get back. And so, I mean, certainly good fundamentals. You want to have a player that has good fundamentals. A little bit of, you know, players that have a little bit of funkiness to your swing, which require you hitting a lot of golf balls to maintain that level. Might not be, might not work out that well in college because you are actually playing less golf in college than you do in the summertime. You just have less time for golf and you’ve got to be banking as I say, banking your fundamentals, banking that time. So when you’re playing college golf and you’re not getting to play as much as you do and practice as much as you do the summertime in high school, you got to be able to have good fundamentals. Good fundamentals are important. Yeah, sure. Scoring, that’s important.
A player doesn’t play well one day. Yes, what you just said a few minutes about how you carry yourself and all that. Yeah, that’s sure. That’s part of it. Not looking for someone pounding the club in the ground or throwing the club and all that. Not looking for that. Not looking for anyone with slump shoulders. Not looking for anyone with head down and quitting on the day. You know, if someone’s not playing well, you’d like to observe is that player still digging it out, still trying to make it work. Those are visible things that you can see.
But later conversation, we talked to the player, hey, how’d it go and how was it going? And you both know that the player didn’t play well, then the question becomes, what were you doing about it? What’d you do about it? What action did you take?
What mental skills have you learned? Have you acquired to do anything about it? Interesting, funny. You mentioned this topic here recently. I’ve gotten a couple of text messages from players who apologized for not playing well. I apologize. I didn’t shoot a good score. My mental game was off. My mental skills were not good that day and when we followed up on the phone conversation, I said, what would you do about it?
Well, I don’t really know. Just nothing. I just did nothing. So that’s kind of an indicator that might be hard for that player to make that transition in college. You don’t have to. Golf’s a funny game when it’s not going your way. The adversity of golf when it’s not going your way. You really need to be aware of it. You need to have a plan to address it.
Hard to address it. You’re not judged on the effectiveness of addressing it, but the fact that you are trying to address it, if that makes any sense? That you’ve got a plan for it. If that plan A doesn’t work, you’ve to go to plan B. In college, a couple of examples. I’ll give you a couple of examples. Mental skills. Player says, I’m not doing well. I’ve just made four bogeys. I can’t drive the ball in the fairway.
Things that I use is, try to be simple. As we’re walking down the fairway, we have a term we stop for a second. Take a practice swing. Say out loud what you want to do. Just say out loud what you want to do. And hopefully you can simplify that and break that down. It might even get to the point, let’s do this, let’s just swing the club to the top, brush the grass, hold your finish. That’s all.
The player will go what? That’s all. Let’s just swing the club at the top. Brush the grass, hold your finish. After all, we’re in a tournament. We don’t have much time yet to get it done, but trying to break that down. Player was probably thinking so much about technical aspects of this swing and all bundled up. Trying to make it as simple as possible. Let’s just swing the club, get it to the top, brush the grass, follow through. It’s amazing how much that works. Also, what can work with the player is no practice swing.
Next shot, no practice swing. No practice swing and don’t aim at the target. I don’t care where you aim. Aim at the houses. I don’t care. Just pull a club out. No practice swing and go hit it. I don’t care where you hit it. Well, they’re all athletes. You’re not going to be hitting at the houses. I don’t think, but it’s amazing how that works. No practice swing. Don’t aim at the target. I don’t care where you hit it. Just do it. I actually last a couple of years I’ve actually added that to putting.
Players complain I can’t putt, blap, blap, having trouble, you know, whatever the issue of the day is. Let’s not, practice swings, and don’t line it up. Don’t line the putt up. I do assure that you do know if it goes left to right or right to left. You do know that, most people do. I don’t care how much. Let’s just use your athleticism.
We’re going back to mental skills here. We’re trying to get away from being all bunched up in all of the technical aspects of putting. I did a camp a couple of weeks ago. Had six guys, actually. It was fun. We were putting from six feet. And I said to everyone, go through your whole pre-shot routine, your putting routine from six feet. Let’s go with it.
Good players and players that know, I’ve got trouble putting this out of issues today looking for help. But it’s interesting, they went through all the technical aspects of what they did. What they never said at all was, main objective from six feet was put the ball in the hole. They never said that. And when I asked them, you guys aren’t trying to make the putt, you didn’t say put the ball in the hole. They acted so shocked. But actually, that is the objective. So again, going back to mental skills as a coach working with the player, you’re trying to find out where the player is at in the process mental skills? Or well, I’m going to say they’re more important than technical skills. I guess I can’t say that they’re both. They’re both important, but without proper mental skills and how you approach how you practice for a tournament, how you approach a practice round, how you approach the day of a tournament, how you play during the tournament. Without proper mental skills, it’s really hard to play well consistently.
**Josh Nichols**
Yeah, mental skills limit how high you can shoot and they kind of break the barrier of how low you can shoot. Your technique kind of sets where you’re at, generally speaking, but mental skills make the bad days better, good days better.
**Bruce Chalas**
I had a player. I think I can make this a short story had a player not too long ago. Good player. We’re playing in an excellent golf course. She shoots 73, 71, 144, two over two off the lead. Seven three putts in two days out of three putts says Bruce. Can you help me? I want to win the tournament. Three putting I got seven three putts in two days and I want to win the tournament. Can you help me with my putting?
I said, yeah, but if I give you my advice, I don’t really want to waste your time and my time. You got to do what I say to do. A little bit of a gamble here, what I was doing. But I know the player well. I know the player is very competitive, good player, wants to do well, wants to win. But I also know I had to do something that the player was going to listen to me in my advice and hopefully it worked. And I didn’t have much time. I’m in between round two and three. We’re ready to go back to the van. We’re ready to go to dinner and start the day the next day. I don’t have much time and I’ve got to do something to capture the players attention as a coach and it’s got to be disruptive.
It’s got to be disruptive. So I took a gamble. Said, OK, let’s because what we do tomorrow play the same game you’re playing great hitting the ball great in a lot of greens. You got 73 putts. We just need to fix that. So tomorrow here’s what we do on every one of your first putts tomorrow. Make sure you miss that putt. Try and make sure you miss it. So if you’ve got a 30 footer tomorrow, do not make that first putt and if you hit it in three or four feet in your second shot, you’re gonna stiff nice and tight three feet.
Do not make the putt. Make sure you miss it. Don’t make the putt. I walk away. I heard in the background, said, I wonder what teammates did you hear what he said to me. I’m trying to win the tournament. He’s telling me to miss putts.
Next morning at breakfast, early at 6:30, I say, hey, how you doing? She’s terrible. I’ve been up all night trying to win the tournament. I didn’t sleep a wink. And you’re telling me to miss my first putt from three feet. I said, that’s exactly right. Let’s just do it again. Repeat it again. I didn’t talk to the rest of the day. I went by, course, and handed the water and snacks and all that. But I intentionally did not want to talk to her all day. And I knew it was very uncomfortable, really uncomfortable. I don’t know. She got off the 18th green. I yelled.
What do we have? Said, hey, 17 greens I just hit. Oh, no three putts. And she had three putted seven times in two days. 17 greens, no three putts, four one putts, four birdies. I shot 67, four under. It wins by a shot. Not bad.
The home in the van. Said, how do we got that? The advice goes, she said it was really uncomfortable and I didn’t sleep. I was up all night and the first seven holes was really hard to play. It was I did. We just said it was so uncomfortable, but after the seventh hole something strange happened. The ball started going in the hole, right? What she was doing, which I couldn’t tell her, was that aggressive play up hitting at 20–25 feet aggressive trying to make birdies running at the putts. You’re running at 6–8 feet by and missing every putt coming back.
Stop missing a few, then you’re missing a lot. So I couldn’t say to her, just put the ball up close, manage yourself, two putts is good. I couldn’t do the same sayings that we know. I needed to say something very disruptive and it was going to capture her attention. A little bit of a gamble, but it worked. And so, I mean, it was managing your putt and it was…
It also comes up to mental skills, because when you’re three putting seven greens, you are clearly thinking three putts. That’s big in your mind. I can’t two putt, I’m three putting, that whole thing. When I give her something so different, so annoying, so disruptive, missing the putt, that has nothing to do with three putts. But yet we are addressing that three putt issue. We’re getting away from that negative mental thought that you have about three putting. I mean, when you’re three putting on a string like that, you’re all you’re thinking about is don’t three putt. You’re not thinking about making a putt or making a two putt. You’re thinking don’t three putt. And so I had to do something that was very disruptive and get away from that negative thinking, which I think, I guess, did it work? Well, I really don’t know. I can’t say it worked because I wasn’t here. But she shot 67 four under with no three putts. Maybe it did help a little bit.
Point and my story is when you’re playing tournament golf, you’ve got to, when it’s not going your way, you’ve got to be able to make a change, not only in your game, not a change, but an adaptation to help yourself. But mentally, you’ve got to find a path that works for you. You can’t sit and just repeat it, repeat it over and over again and do nothing about it and commit a complaint to yourself, your teammates and your coach when you’re done. You’ve got to take it upon yourself to make that change.
**Josh Nichols**
Yeah, and this goes right back into take that’s an awesome story. I mean, it’s I feel like you told that story when you were on six years ago and it blew my mind then and it’s blowing my mind now because I love your you’re kind of changing the objective, but you’re giving the player something to think about that as opposed to something to avoid your even though you’re saying avoid the hole miss the hole but you’re saying here’s your objective.
And that focuses the player on this one thing as opposed to all these other things that they’re thinking about. Is that, you know, if we’re zooming out and we’re talking about just kind of amateur golfers or golfers as a whole, is that something we should all kind of maybe not that specific example, but is that something we should all do that disruptive thing?
**Bruce Chalas**
Well, you’ve got to do something. You can’t keep repeating the same process, which doesn’t work. And you actually, I think, and you know more about this than I do, think, but subliminally, you actually want it to happen. I’m going to play, I’m hitting my irons terrible. I’m hitting them in the bunkers. I’m missing the greens. And I’ll say to a player, I don’t think I can help you. You have to help yourself.
And I’ll say to the player, you’re telling me you’re missing greens. You’re telling me you’re hitting the ball in the bunker. You’re not hitting the greens in regulation. You’ve been telling me this for a day, two days, last two tournaments all week. When you say something like that, I’m missing greens, my irons aren’t any good, I can’t hit the greens in regulation, you actually, that’s what you want to do.
You’re trying to do that. And I kind of flip it around. Say, look, you’re actually trying to do that because that’s all you talk about. That must be your objective is to miss the greens. And since you’re missing greens, you actually should be congratulated on your objective. I’m going to tell you that approach. It gets a lot of play. They’re not happy. They’re not happy with that at all. But I think it’s true. And I challenge them with that.
**Josh Nichols**
That shakes people up.
Yeah. Yeah, it makes you… Right.
**Bruce Chalas**
By the way, many times they snap out of it pretty quick. Pretty quick.
**Josh Nichols**
They realize my this is destructive self-talk. It’s not helpful. I need to instead of talk about the bad things and talk about what I want to avoid I need to what’s my what’s the objective that I do WANT and let my language match my objective.
**Bruce Chalas**
And they don’t do that and they take the negative or they take the what didn’t work out and repeating it, repeating it, repeating it as though they can’t handle it. I’ve had many players say, can I talk to you before we go on this trip? I’ve had you in my brain for the last week. That’s all I hear about you congratulating me for missing greens. I said, well, no, I’m congratulating you for doing what you actually are setting yourself up to do. And a lot of times that gets a player on track, which is really, really fun to see. It’s interesting. It’s fun to see.
**Josh Nichols**
Yeah, yeah. I mean, calling players out on their destructive tendencies is, I mean, that’s got to be one of the most important things of a coach. So back to kind of the recruiting vein of things. This is clearly a skill that, you know, the regular junior golfer should do. In your camps that you do, you kind of address these things when you’re talking to these players? Do you talk about the mental skills?
**Bruce Chalas**
Yeah, sure, of course. We actually sit down and talk just like we’re talking right now. We devote enough time to be able to talk about what’s off in their game and mental skills and what they need to be work on. We’ll go on the golf course. We’ll hit shots on the golf course. Whether I’m with them in the camps or the golf team, sometimes we might play around and practice round with no pins. I’ll run up ahead and take the pins out. No pins. We’re trying to the middle of the green. We actually sometimes, when we play, let’s hit the ball in the bunker.
And then get up and down, so we’re practicing up and down. And we’re actually, you we’re not practicing hitting the green. We be practicing hitting the ball in the bunker. So it’s a specific small target that we’re hitting. And then we practice up and down. Don’t be afraid to do something different in your routine on how you approach practicing, let’s say.
**Josh Nichols**
I love that. Okay. What would be a good first email for a potential recruit to send you? What are you looking for in that first email?
**Bruce Chalas**
Really short, concise, sorry about this, but 17 years old, 18 years old, your whole life is reduced to three paragraphs. Don’t forget the reader, whether it’s me or anyone else, typically we all get our information now. We’re probably not sitting home with our desktop. We’re probably not with a laptop in front of us all day. We’re on the phone and we’re distracted. So.
If I’m a recruit, your recruits should be aware that the reader on the other end is probably getting that information on the cell phone, which means they’re scrolling and they’re scrolling for how long? 20 seconds. How long do you give a message on the phone? You’re scrolling from the top down and reading from the middle out. So you want to make the reader is distracted. Therefore, you want to make that text message as concise as you can. Three paragraphs. First paragraph introduction. My name is and I would like to go to your school. I want to go to name the school. Don’t say your school. I want to go to the name of the school. Please get the spelling correct. And hopefully you might have studied the website so you might look to see the name of the business school or the name of the science school that you want to study at. So name that school within that college or university. And first paragraph for introduction yourself, you want to go to that school and you want to join the competitive golf team. You don’t want to play golf. You want to compete on the golf team. You’re not a golfer. You’re not playing golf. You’re you want to compete on the team. Nice word to use, keyword. Second paragraph academics, which is always ahead of the golf second academics attached. You should have a bunch of attachments attached as my GPA attaches my high school transcript.
Attaches my SAT, ACT or TOEFL. So all of your academics are attached and the coach says that they go back and forth. Great, can you send me your SATs? Wait another message, can you send me your ACTs or send me your grades, back and forth, the back and forth is what can kill it. So you want to have all of your academics, ACT, SAT, TOEFL.
High school transcript, all of those attached, easy to read and make sure they can open. Third paragraph, attach your golf resume. Last 12 months, tournament results. Name of the tournament, yardage, really important, and medal scores. Don’t really care what place you finished.
Care what you shoot, care what your medal scores are from what yardage in what tournament. So that and no more than 12 months. We don’t have to go back to seven years old and first time hitting golf ball and all that. We don’t need to do that. Just the last 12 months to show a trend of where your scores are. Also, just the way golf has evolved, track man data. You gotta have track man, especially both men and women. Attach is my track man data. What the coach is really looking for is how far you hit the ball. How far you carry the ball is really what the number is and how far the rollout is. So you wanna have your golf resume on there, your track man data. Video of your swing.
Swing three or four tee shots three or four hybrids a couple of five irons and maybe a small 20-yard pitch shot and the video should be straight on 90 degrees and also down the line both no music we don’t need Beyonce and no words no lettering just just your video that’s all we don’t need the distractions of and I like Beyonce I like hip-hop and all that but no need to
**Josh Nichols**
There’s a time and a place.
**Bruce Chalas**
Yeah, no, just a straight video with was straight on down the line.
Schedule of the upcoming schedule that you have on the next three to six months, what tournaments you might be playing on so the coach can follow you. So now you’ve got a short email, your name, where you’re from, your academics, your golf.
And all these attachments. There’s actually there’s no reason for the coach to go back and forth to you to say, can you please send me? It’s all there and make sure all the make sure they all can can open up and video should not really be on YouTube YouTube. You see a lot of other stuff which might not be to your benefit on YouTube is distracting. Make sure everything, including golf swing, can open up all the time at the end. Thank you for your time, coach. I’d like to schedule a time we could talk and give a day and a time which invites a response. Can we talk next week out. Can we talk next Thursday at 10 o’clock or at a time of your convenience, but you want to ask the coach for a time to speak with the coach and that question invites a response. Hopefully that wasn’t too much what I just gave you. That letter is four paragraphs, is three paragraphs long and asking the coach with all of the attachments and the attachments will change over time they’ll be upgraded, updated, they’ll change over time. So you want to be flexible for that.
**Josh Nichols**
Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s the, it’s kind of like, here’s me, right? Like you said, you’re summarizing your entire life into this and those paragraphs, like you said, you’re on your phone. They don’t need to be 18 sentences long paragraphs. It’s just, here’s, give you the quickest information. You’re not writing a novel. You’re simply producing information for the coach to see quickly. That’s super helpful advice.
**Bruce Chalas**
And you’ve given your golf scores and just Joshua just want back in the on the golf course. So a little bit tricky on the golf scores. You’re hoping that you’re shooting good scores. You want to present good scores. Of course, we all know that the challenge for the player is when the players playing in the tournament to play their game to shoot good scores and not be worried about playing during the tournament. I gotta make this putt, I gotta make these putts, I gotta shoot a good score today for the coach. That’s a whole other area you don’t want to be going down that path. You want to be able to play your game. Go out and have some fun. Play a game, play a tournament, enjoy it and be able to send some nice scores from the coach. But many players get wrapped up. Oh my God, today I got 36 holes. I gotta shoot a good score. I can’t make any doubles. I gotta make the 10 footers. That’s common and generally that doesn’t. That’s not very productive, so the challenges for a player. The question becomes how do you play in a tournament? Shoot a good score. You know you want to shoot it for the coach but I don’t want to be putting that pressure on myself. What do do about that? How do you address that? And you have methods for that and skills that you address that, no doubt.
**Josh Nichols**
Yeah, so that is that’s like a skill within a skill I you know, I need to present myself well to this coach, but also I need to not let that affect me, but also I need to tell the coach how I’m addressing these things I you and how how you know, like maybe on subsequent emails when they’re updating you on their scores How much do you want them to be honest? I shot an 87 and here’s the things I struggle with, here’s the things I did well, here’s what I’m gonna do to address it. Is that valuable to you or is that just kind of fluff?
**Bruce Chalas**
Yeah, sure, of course. Yeah, you’re looking for trends in a player. You’re looking for the you’re really looking for how wide the gap is between good scores and you know, not so good scores. I mean, ideally, if when a player is playing well, the players shooting 73 or 74, it’s great. And then when the player is not playing well, nothing is dropping. It’s not going the way they shoot 78, 79. That’s a decent gap. That’s pretty good. If the gap is 73 to 90.
You know, how come? And you do see that. And how come? When you see a good player, sometimes they shoot very, very high scores. And well, what happened? Well, coach, I just knew I’m trying to get scores into you and a lot of pressure on me leading up. And you try to walk through that with the player. Try to get the player to realize that the game is to hit the ball from a spot to a spot, spot to spot. Hit the ball on the ground to the green, let’s say. You’re hitting the ball to a spot. That’s ideal if the player can be thinking of that. Swinging at that ball to that spot, 150 yards away, or whatever it is. The challenges become when the player starts introducing, god, there’s a tree, there’s a river, there’s a pond, there’s a bunker, and I’ve got to shoot a good score today. And it just builds and builds and builds. So the more the player brings in all these other variables, which are factors in what’s going on in playing that day, but it has nothing to do with the ball from spot A to spot B. And you’ve got to, hopefully the player can recognize that and take steps to get them where they’re just hitting it from spot point A to point B. By the way, this is not only limited to just recruits. This happens in college. Now it becomes, now I want to make the team. I want to make the top five. I don’t want to be left home. And it really is, it’s the same thing. It just keeps going on and on. What players do is they think about the end result.
They think about the end result instead of going through the process. Sometimes I might tell a player, or recruit, let’s say. I was so excited, I wanted to play, and I didn’t play well. I said, well, what are you going to shoot tomorrow?
And, well, I don’t know, what are you going to shoot? Well, I don’t know, I’ve got to play. Exactly. You’ve got to play, you’ve to go through the process. What the players do is they don’t do that. They will bring all these other distractions and negative issues into it, and it just really can snowball, snowball.
**Josh Nichols**
Man you’re laying out the this entire landscape of what a college recruit needs to be but also ultimately what a college player needs to be so if you could in as tight of a package as possible what do you see is the difference between an eventual college player and one who’s definitely just you’re not gonna get recruited. You’re not gonna make it.
**Bruce Chalas**
A lot of things, but really simple things. When I talk to them, they look at me straight in the eye. Is their head down? Number one. I’ll ask you, I’ll ask you, are you a good player? Are you a good player? It’s amazing you asked that question. A lot of players can’t answer that.
**Josh Nichols**
Him and her, ehhh, I’m okay.
**Bruce Chalas**
Yeah, exactly. Got you. Got to you know you got to. Yeah, I’m a good player. It’s just very competitive out there. So a lot of people looking for that spot that you’re looking for on the golf team. Are you looking at me in the eye? Are you proud of yourself? You’re proud of what you do. If I say something about what are you doing? How do you play? You gotta be able to know your game. You gotta know your game. How you approach it from a technical aspect. How you get the ball and just how you approach the game. Your strategy on playing the course.
And a lot of times I think the confidence in a player comes up. And if a player is struggling a bit and is working on it, that’s okay too, that counts. But what doesn’t count is I’m just really not that good and I don’t really know what I’m doing and the player is actually cutting themselves.
**Josh Nichols**
Mmm. Yeah, you want you’re looking for self-awareness self-confidence self-belief, right? These things are these things will give the player staying power and you’re gonna fight through things even when it’s difficult. You’re gonna show up when the right you’re gonna lead the team when everyone else is down those kind of things.
**Bruce Chalas**
I’ll ask a player who’s a big influence in your life. Who are the big influences in life? Your instructor, your mom, your dad, your friend. Who are the big influences in your life? And I try to learn that. I try to learn the background. I try to learn from a coaching point of view and the numerous calls that I might have with a player either in person or on the phone. I try to learn the environment that they’re coming from. Is it a supportive environment? Is it a critical environment? That’s important to know the environment and the support structure that they either have or don’t have.
If they don’t have a very good support structure, that still is okay because that can be fixed. If they come from an environment with constant criticism and constant beating down, that’s pretty hard for the player to overcome. I’d like to know relationship they have with their parents. How do they treat their parents? Do they treat their parents nice? Do treat their parents with respect? Do treat their parents nice? Or they don’t?
That is a bit of a sign of what kind of player you’re getting. If I could give back to advice to parents again, if I could give advice to parents, it’s okay if your son or daughter makes a mistake in golf. It’s okay, it’s fine, it’s okay. In fact, if they don’t make mistakes, how do they recognize success? How do you recognize success if you made mistakes? It’s important to let them make mistakes because when you’re on the golf course, you’re all by yourself.
And golf is loaded with adversity and mistakes. You’ve got to be able to rebound from them so let your son or daughter shoot a bad score. Had a bad shot. Play a bad hole and yeah, you’re there to support emotional support words that are said.
Body language with no words. Body language can be devastating sometimes. Devastating. So these outside influences have a big role to play in the environment that player has been in as they’re making the transition from high school to college.
**Josh Nichols**
Hmm Coach this is some very very important information that if anyone ever asked me about college recruiting. This is where I’ll send them else I’ll just say go listen to this episode with Bruce with coach Chalice and you will probably get everything you could possibly know there’s nitty gritties like NCAA rules and stuff that you can just Google but as far as like what do I? Who do I need to be? In order to be recruited. Who do I need to be in order to be a college, a student athlete, to be a college teammate, to be a competitive college player? What you’re laying out here is basically it. And it reflects my own experience. It reflects the experience of players that I know that have been recruited, players that I know that ultimately didn’t get recruited. So this, I mean, this is awesome.
**Bruce Chalas**
A lot of times, Josh, a question I get all the time, well, what are you looking for, Coach? All the time, get that question a lot. And Pete, players and parents, I know that they’re thinking golf score, the thinking golf score. And I’ll say, look, I don’t really know if I have the right answer for you after all these years of coaching, but what am I looking for? Someone that wants to be at this school, whatever the school is, whoever the school is, somebody that wants to be here. Somebody that wants to be here. Somebody that wants to play golf here, compete here, travel here, represent the school, study here, walk down the street with friends. Someone that wants to be on this campus, because you’re going to be here for nine months, for four years. And if you’re taking summer school or internships, you might not go home for a summer or two.
But someone that wants to be here in this environment and that’s what I think what many coaches are looking for. It’s kind of an underscored or understated attribute, but someone that wants to be here. Someone that wants to play and study here.
**Josh Nichols**
Yep, it gets looked over. Okay, Coach, where would you send people? What do want to share with people? What do you got going on?
**Bruce Chalas**
I’m busy. Live in Pinehurst, is golf heaven in the US. My home is in Pinehurst, and I have run golf camps in the summertime. Young men and young women. Boston University Girls Golf Clinic will give you a good insight as to how I combine academics and golf and help try to point you to the right conference and to the right schools or whatever. Of course, that becomes your choice. But hope to give you some advice in that area.
**Josh Nichols**
That’s awesome. And is there a site or something placed specifically so much ago?
**Bruce Chalas**
The site with all the information is bostonuniversitygirlsgolfclinic.com. A lot of good information on there. This podcast will be on there. Appreciate it.
**Josh Nichols**
Awesome. Coach, this has been a pleasure. Thank you.
**Bruce Chalas**
Thanks, Josh. Appreciate it. Thank you.
