Podcast Transcript
Josh Nichols
What do people ask you the most? What do golfers ask you the most? Like what do they think you know that they don’t have? Are they slicing? Yeah, right. Seriously.
David Buck
Why do I slice it? That’s probably the most common question. Why do I slice it? Like the thing, and it’s not even slice it with the irons, the wedges, whatever, it’s the driver. It’s why do I slice it with the driver? And you get the flat face on there and you get the side spin going and it just gets a little complicated. I mean, the driver swings a little bit different than everything else, but I mean, I get everything on there. It’s crazy. It’s crazy. Awesome. I get very few questions about putting.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, putting’s boring.
David Buck
So I’m not sure if people are just not interested in how to hit good putts but anything to do with swing with chunking it is a very common thing. Why am I chunking it with my wedges? I would say chunking and slices are probably the two most common and then the people who actually reach out afterwards it’s always the shanks.
Josh Nichols
Right… they’re afraid to talk about it during…
David Buck
You get shanks or yips and it’s like, okay, my life is over in golf until I fix this issue. But yeah, it’s been a really nice little snapshot of what’s going on in the world of golf and how we can help people as coaches.
Josh Nichols
Hmm. Hmm. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of regular people. Do you, you know, when someone asks you a question during the live, they say, okay, well, how do I stop slicing with my driver? What do you do in that moment? Do you talk about it or do you show something?
David Buck
Absolutely. Yeah. I talk about it, show it. I’m in a sim at the moment. Like it’s not a sim. It’s a crude net and mat combo, but yeah, we show it. And you know, my thing forever has been — I don’t say forever. My thing since I got the most incredible five-minute lesson ever by Tim Simpson back in 2001 — has been what happens at impact and how do we make that part consistent? How do you arrive at the same place at impact each time?
And so when you get to your driver, you’ve got to change a couple of things in your body position and your setup in order to arrive there consistently where it’s pointing straight. Otherwise you’re going to throw the club out and you’re going to come across it and change your path, change your face angle. And as soon as you do that, guess what? The ball’s going somewhere else.
So as soon as they ask, I show a couple things of how to give yourself a better chance of getting to impact. Then I always start impact — quite literally the foot before and the foot after — just rehearse that and start working that and then add speed to it.
Josh Nichols
Right, kind of body motion, what it feels like going through impact, how the club is moving through impact. Is that kind of what you’re talking about, foot before, foot after?
David Buck
Exactly. So basically, we can talk mechanics all day long, but it makes no difference whatsoever if the person can’t do it. So let’s learn how to do it first, and then we’ll figure out the next part.
Josh Nichols
Mm. Right, I’ve seen your reels or YouTube videos where you’re on your head standing and your head is down to the ball. You said it starts at the ball. Yeah, right. The swing roasts. I mean, it’s good. Cause you know, everyone has their own versions of struggles. What do you think leads a golfer to, all due respect… when I’m making fun of people’s swings who come in… me, you are kind of random people, right? They don’t know we’re not on a PGA tour at the top of the game. We’re, for all intents and purposes, just random people out there that know about the game. What do you think leads people to asking random people, how do I do X, Y, or Z in golf?
David Buck
How do I do X, Y, or Z in golf? What leads to it is just, I think there’s two things. Number one, on the internet there’s a lot of information and a lot of it’s very complex. Golf is not an easy game, but it is a simple game. So as soon as you start talking to people who don’t know how to hit the ball already and you start talking — and I’m just going to step on a couple toes here because you either have steel-toe boots or move your feet out of the way — when you start talking about P7 or P5 or P38, I’m sorry but you’ve lost the majority of people’s understanding in golf.
Josh Nichols
You’ve lost me.
David Buck
I’m sure I can figure out the P system, but it’s like, okay, well, you have to check, I want checkpoints. I want to check here and check here and check here. And so that thing comes up and it’s like, well, hold on a second. How do you even know that P-whatever is going to get you to impact properly? And so a lot of people reach out and basically say, I just like how simple you keep it. Okay, great. That’s wonderful. And then add a flair of humor because I don’t know if you’ve been to a golf course lately, but just for fun — my wife was doing something else in town and I’m like, well, I don’t want to go shopping, so I’m going to go to a golf course. And I hit some shots and then I’m just going to walk around. And I was listening. It was a very busy golf course, very nice golf course. And I was just listening to these groups of four guys over and over and over walking through. I mean, they were hooting and hollering. They were ribbing each other. They were jabbing at each other. It’s just a fun environment. A guy shanks it and it’s enough for everybody to laugh. And so we already know that we like making fun of ourselves. Why are we taking it so seriously and saying, okay, well, it’s a serious game, you have to wear a suit and you gotta make sure it’s P6 here, right here. It’s fun. Let’s keep it fun. So people reach out, I think, because keep it fun and give at least an attempted real answer in a quick and simple way. It’s not for everybody. You get the riveters on there and the people giving you crap. So I just respond to them with more sarcasm.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, right, yeah, that’s good. You gotta keep it light and then when people respond with not light, then you gotta respond with more light, right? You gotta maintain that vibe. So okay, you said golf is simple but not easy. Is there a time in your life where you have made golf overly complicated for yourself? Like you got away from simple?
David Buck
Heck yes. I think that’s true for everybody. Going back far enough, I used to play professionally. I was pretty good. I came up through the junior ranks and did some college stuff and turned pro and won some small stuff. And then there was a period of time after that where I got the yips, okay? I remember the day — I was still playing professionally at the time. I was on the putting green at a course in East Texas. And for the first time, I hit a probably six-foot putt and my hands didn’t go where I thought my hands should go. And I don’t want to say it’s been a lifelong struggle, but there were a lot of periods there in my life where it was just there in the back of my mind or nagging from behind to the point at one point where I just gave it up for several months. I brought it back pretty quickly because I can’t live without golf, but yeah, there’s certainly times where things go the wrong way.
You know, I think that brings us to your show, Josh, because the mental side of the game… Even during the worst times of my yips, I would never yip the second putt. Isn’t that interesting? So if I dropped another one and hit it, I could hit it no problem. Gee, I wonder what the problem is. It’s not mechanical. Yeah, absolutely. It’s probably the putter that I’m using — it’s cuz L.A.B. didn’t exist at the time. So then you look at that and it’s like, this intrigues me greatly. Okay, great. So the second putt you can hit perfectly fine each and every time. Or the second chip you can hit each and every time. So what changes? Well it goes right back to complicated over simple. You can hit it the second time because there’s no pressure. Well why is there pressure? Because you believe that by focusing extra hard on this particular thing you’re going to succeed at it. When in reality it’s still a game. Like to relate it back to tennis players who are probably the best stress players of any sport — the ball’s coming at you. I’m sure they’re not thinking, well, here at P6 I got to be just like this as I’m hitting it down the line. No, the ball’s coming at you. You hit it that way. So let’s get back to playing golf instead of thinking golf.
Josh Nichols
Right. Did you say that you still struggle with quote-unquote yips to this day?
David Buck
No, I don’t anymore. Every once in a while there’s one that pops up, but I know what to do about it now. It is a mental thing, but there is a physical component to it, which has to do with where we believe we’re looking and where our bodies are lined up. Just a crossing of lines. So if I think I’m aiming at a particular point, but my body’s aimed right of that, my mind is saying I want to go that way, my body’s saying no I want to go that way and there’s a fight between it. So if I look at it from a perspective of truth — the truth of the matter is my eyes and my body aren’t lined up. So if I then either go practice it or just step aside and rehearse and like, okay, there’s a difference here. If I’m like, oh, got the round done, well guess what? I’m going to have it for the rest of the round. If I say, okay, let’s focus on truth. What’s reality here? The reality is I’m not lined up somewhere. Can I figure it out? Usually I can figure it out in one or two putts or even one or two practice strokes. For me the tendency is to look left. So it’s the first glance — when you’re set up and you glance, where do you look first? And you actually have to practice that. So you set up lines and you know visually and in reality where you’re aimed and then you have to practice looking at that point. So my tendency is look left, therefore my body aims to the right and now I’ve changed the mechanics to compensate.
Josh Nichols
So you think a lot of the yips — or maybe every yip situation — is caused by alignment issues? Or just for yourself?
David Buck
I think it starts with alignment issues and then it turns into tension and tension is the killer of the golf swing. If you’re not getting to where your body naturally is trying to get to to hit the ball, then now I’m fighting it. And when I fight it, your hands tighten up, your forearms tighten up, your shoulders tighten up, and now you’re screwed. So then you have to get into the mental side of things of, well, what’s reality here? You know, we have expectations where we’re trying to hit a little white ball and then we’re looking 250 yards into the distance and say, well, it has to go there. And I want to control that. Well, you can’t control that. You can only control what’s happening here. So I think the return to truth in your golf game and then return to truth in what your body is doing and what you’re trying to do helps to overcome that fear which lowers the tension which removes the problem and it’s a cascading effect. But we expect certain things and as soon as we expect things in life then there’s pressure involved. And it’s like for a long time for me I expected to succeed because I wanted to please what my dad had done for me in raising me up in the game. And this is pretty recent stuff here, Josh — since I’ve gone a lot more public with things I spent a couple hours talking to my dad and basically just said I’m sorry for giving up when I did and we had a long chat about it and a cry about it whatever — and even since then there’s been a release or a removal of tension in golf where I no longer expect and if I don’t expect then I can just go out and play.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, boy, no kidding. Yeah, it’s deep — it’s a deep at-your-core thing. It’s not… we usually all jump to the end symptom where we say, I’m just tense, I need to relax or I need to drink a beer, I need to just crack some jokes and then I’ll relax. But if there’s something deeper under there that’s causing the tension, maybe it’s a fear of some kind, maybe it’s a validation like you’re talking about of some kind. So yours goes back to childhood and I don’t necessarily want to open up your Pandora’s box of your childhood, but when you say I’m sorry for giving up when I did — is that when you moved on from pro golf?
David Buck
Yes. Yeah. I was 23 years old at the time. I was probably immature — not probably, I definitely was immature for the time. I’m a little older than that now. And you look back at 23-year-olds and you’re like, yeah, little baby child playing golf. And I wasn’t having the success that I expected. And then there becomes this downward spiral.
Josh Nichols
So when you say I’m sorry for giving up, is there some regret there? Like you should have kept going?
David Buck
Yes and no. Glad I’m happy with my choices in life. I don’t tend to spend very much time on regret, but I had promised him a certain amount of years before moving on or thinking about doing something else. And I didn’t fulfill that promise. So that’s more of a man-of-my-word kind of thing.
Josh Nichols
I see. So that is maybe a lingering… you kind of were carrying that baggage with you and you’ve recently let it go, which has released a lot of tension.
David Buck
Yeah, and there’s a palpable difference in the amount of fun that I’m having on the golf course and in my thought process going through the round. I mean, I’ve known all these things, but now you start to apply them. And I think the disappointing part for me is that I’m so old now. I wish I’d have known this stuff 20 years ago. And that’s the dichotomy of sport — you’ve got to succeed while you’re young, but you don’t have the maturity to succeed when you’re young. So I’m actually going to give it another go. Probably next year, I’m going to jump back into tournament play.
Josh Nichols
No kidding. Awesome, how old are you?
David Buck
I’ll be 43 in five days.
Josh Nichols
Happy birthday. Yeah, speed training and stuff like that.
David Buck
I’ve picked up 20 yards in the last two years off the tee. I put it all up on YouTube and said well does this stuff work? So dove into that pretty heavily and I’m gonna dive into it again in the fall because it’s actually made me more accurate off the tee while adding yards — which is contrary to what everybody tells you about you can’t go speed training, you’re gonna lose all your accuracy. I’m actually more accurate than I was before because it has everything to do with adding speed to the impact position which remains the same every time no matter what.
Josh Nichols
No kidding. Hmm, why do you think that is?
David Buck
I like the Earl Woods quote on this one: You can swing as hard as you want as long as you keep your balance and you can be confident that you’re going to hit the center of the clubface. So it has to do with location on the clubface. Our drivers are so big now that you’ve got a big leeway, but if you get yourself a smaller driver and practice with it, you pretty quickly realize that you actually can hit the center of the clubface. So center of the clubface and then there’s a lot of stuff that you can do in your swing that just goes faster. It doesn’t even so much change the mechanics of your swing. It’s just that you’re retraining your muscles to fire faster and you’re applying more force. With more force comes a faster turn. You look at the amount of time it takes Rory to get from the top of his backswing to the ball and you compare that to other people — he just does it faster. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t do it mechanically properly. No, it’s just faster.
Josh Nichols
Interesting. So that’s a big factor in giving it another go, giving pro golf another go next year. What do you think are some other factors between you and doing well next year?
David Buck
Precision of short game and then putting. I’ve always been a very good iron player. I hit a lot of greens, I hit a lot of fairways, but now I’m hitting a lot of fairways longer. But when you get into tournament play, it’s 60 yards and in and on the green — and on the green is speed. So it’s finishing beside the hole after every putt, not even making everything. It’s giving yourself manageable, very easy tap-ins or dying it into the hole.
Josh Nichols
Mm-hmm. How are you going to work on speed?
David Buck
There’s a lot of different thought on this one. This is what I’ve done for the last 28 years: We stand at 150 yards and we want to know if it’s 150 yards, pin’s two yards back, it’s 152, it’s into the wind, it’s going to play 146, it’s downhill, it’s going to play 147 and a half — and then you hit. But then you get to the green and it’s like, no, no, no, you have to feel the putt. It doesn’t matter how far you are, you got to feel how far you are from it. Okay, well, we don’t have a yardage rangefinder to the pin. But what we do have is feet. And you always go up and pull the pin anyways. So go mark your ball, walk to the pin, be the guy that takes the flag out of the hole and while you’re walking, count. And while you’re counting, feel.
Okay, so if I’m 32, that’s too far. 32 steps is a long ways. If I’m 10 steps from the hole and it feels slightly downhill, that means that I’m effectively nine steps from the hole. Okay, well, I have a personalized visual putting gauge based on my feet. I know how far back seven steps is, I know how far back 14 steps is, I know how far back 21 steps is — so then it’s just a gauge in between there and actually picking a distance as opposed to guessing or feeling what that putt is going to do. So if it’s uphill ten-step putt, it’s quite a bit uphill — okay, great, it’s 13 steps, I know what that putt is — and then you just go ahead and hit that just like you would the 146-yard shot. And then here’s the important part: hit that putt, but it’s not gauged on where the ball ends. Success is not where the ball ends. It’s whether you’ve hit the ball the way you wanted. If it happens to go in or happens to go beside the hole, fantastic, we like that. But if you hit it two steps past, you don’t smack your putter and say “suck.” No, I hit the putt I wanted. I just picked the wrong number, just like you would for 146 yards.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. So what is wrong with that self-talk — putting yourself down? You seem to be an upbeat, optimistic guy.
David Buck
I am a very upbeat guy. It’s a problem only when we start going away from truth. Do I suck? No. Did that putt suck? Yes, then say “man that putt sucked.” But if I say something untruthful — I suck or I can never hit a good putt — well now you’re telling yourself a lie and lies don’t produce good golf. Lies don’t really produce anything good in life. The closer we sit to truth, the more we can do something about it. I can say “that putt sucked, I can hit a better one on the next stroke.” But if I suck, well I’m not going to spend days on the putting green to fix that problem. So let’s just stick to the things that are true. Go ahead, put yourself down, but put yourself down in a truthful manner instead of making stuff up.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. And if that putt did suck, well, there’s a reason why, and it’s not because of me as a person. Maybe I need to work on that. Or yeah, I know why — I took the putter too far back or something.
David Buck
We’re saying things like “I can’t putt” versus “I hit that putt to the right.” Hey, the putter face was open at that one. Okay, well I can fix that. I can turn it more to the left. But if I say I can’t putt, yeah, you’re right — you can’t.
Josh Nichols
Hmm. Yeah, so it’s the power of words, the power of self-talk. You start to believe what you’re saying to yourself.
David Buck
And especially if you play with the same guys over and over, the words you say convince the other people around you what to believe and then they re-say it back to you. “Man, you suck at putting.” Instead of something that’s actually going to benefit you long term. I’d boil it back to just say words of truth.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. Well, you’ve said that a few times though — start from truth. I like that because you’re not saying be more positive, right? It would be really easy for you as an optimistic upbeat guy to say “you just need to tell yourself positive things.” You’re not even saying that — you’re saying not negative, not positive, truth. Like see things as they are more neutrally.
David Buck
Right. And my wife was actually the one who put the final nail in the coffin in the yip thing on the putting green. She’s not a great golfer, but she’s very smart when it comes to this kind of crap. I came home from a round of golf and she said I had the yips again. She said “you’re such an idiot.” Speaking truth. And so she started asking me the same questions that I was talking about — well, what are you doing that is making you feel that in your swing? Well, when I get to the ball, my body moves and tries to adjust somewhere and I can’t figure out where. Okay, great. Now we’re getting somewhere. You can’t figure this out. Let’s go figure it out. So she stands behind me and figures out where are you lined up, do you think you’re aiming? Well, you’re aiming right. Lays lines down, holds the putter where it is like, look at that — I’m aimed a foot to the right of where I’m thinking I’m aiming and then I’m pulling it back to the hole. What happens if we line everything up? Ooh, I felt really good. Exactly.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, yeah, it’s actually going where I think it should be going. Huh. Okay, do you have any worries or fears about pro golf, of returning to it 20 years later?
David Buck
I used to. I didn’t jump back into it for a lot of years because of my own expectations. You know, obviously you want to succeed at things in life and you don’t want to look like an idiot. I’ve gotten rid of that. I don’t care if I look like an idiot anymore. And I don’t care if I don’t succeed — I’m putting quotes around the succeed there because what is success? Well, success is whatever you make it to be. And so with that change of expectation comes a renewed excitement about what could be. You know, we miss 100% of the shots we don’t take.
Josh Nichols
Mm-hmm. Do you… your definition of success — in order to not worry about things, you can change your definition of success, you change your expectations to reach that definition of success. So what is your new definition of success?
David Buck
I have a 12-year-old son who’s really enjoying golf and I promised him that when he gets into tournament play so would I. So my expectation is to set an example for my sons on how to handle the pressure situations of life. So if I can go out there and show them what it looks like to live life, to enjoy life, and to try something that’s crazy with upstanding morals — with joy, with bringing joy to others, with showing your competitors that you’re actually cheering for them because it really has nothing to do with them — sure I’m gonna go try to beat them but why can’t I cheer on a great shot or success from other people? It’s not about me. To show an example to the people that are most important to me that it’s not about me.
Josh Nichols
Sure. What would be a failure then, if that’s success — what would failure be?
David Buck
If I don’t try. At this point the failure is just remaining status quo.
Josh Nichols
And now it’s a man-of-your-word thing to your sons — full circle. You make promises, you gotta cash them.
David Buck
You’ve got to cash them.
Josh Nichols
Be prepared to, yeah. So the failure is not even trying. Is there failure involved? I mean, okay, I know you said don’t care about success and that’s in quotes. Is there any tie to results that you care about?
David Buck
Okay, well I’m going to clarify caring about success because there is a care for success — sure fantastic, I would love to win, to play the best golf that I can play. But then how does that look as far as expecting it? If you look at everything in life as a blessing — okay, if I start with nothing and everything that comes in is a blessing, then every time anything happens it’s “this is wonderful, wow this is great.” However, if I start at the top and I expect everything and then it doesn’t come, then everything that doesn’t happen is a negative. So if I achieve the expected result, it’s nothing — there’s no up, it’s just “yeah, well, I expected that.” If I don’t get that, it’s down, down, down. So it’s inverting your expectations. If I start with nothing — I am nobody, I am nothing — then if I finish T40, sweet. If I finish T10, sweet. But if I expect T1 or first place and then I finish second, now that’s a down. Well, I didn’t win. Instead of I hit this shot, I made this putt, I achieved this result. So it’s not that there is no care, it’s that there’s no expectation of number one. The expectation is zero. Everything that I receive on top of that is a blessing.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, right. In order to get everything, you have to be okay with having nothing, right? Kind of paradoxical.
David Buck
It doesn’t make sense until it makes sense.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, until you feel it, right? Huh. So expecting nothing — is that truly where you are at? You do not expect anything? You don’t expect to play well?
David Buck
I expect nothing. It’s not that I don’t expect to play well. It’s that I can play well. But if I tie playing well or the result that I hope for to success or not success, I’m predetermining how I’m going to look at the outcome.
Josh Nichols
You know, I saw some research lately — actually it was from Mark Manson’s book, the one with the subtle art of not giving a [bleep] — he said the best in the world don’t see themselves as the best. They actually see themselves as mediocre, but if they do the right things they could be the best. So they see themselves on… they see themselves as they are. They don’t see themselves as what they expect or what they could get, right? They see themselves as they are. And then…
David Buck
They’re focusing on truth.
Josh Nichols
Right, exactly. Seeing things as they are is that truth. So you go into a round of golf or a tournament and you say, okay, I’m not the best here, but I’m going to do my best, right? Do your best and however it results is how it results.
David Buck
Sure, even in… I’ll shoot the guy’s name — guy one year and a half ago, Eric van Rooyen did a presentation at our club in Mexico the week of the PGA event there as the defending champion. One of the questions was about winning and he says one of the interesting things about winning was that you’re the king of the totem pole for three days. You put all this effort in, you succeed and you achieve the thing that you’re looking for and you have won — three days and then Thursday comes.
Josh Nichols
Until Thursday.
David Buck
And I think he compared that with what Scottie Scheffler is saying now — that the winning isn’t the success. There’s a lot more to life than being the top of a tournament or being the top of whatever. The things that we are told are important aren’t the things that are actually important. I did a little study back when my kids were really young — I was asking older people as many as I could find, if you were to do life all over again, what would you change? And it was never “I had won this” or “I had gotten higher in the company” or “I had achieved this.” It was a better relationship with my children, better relationship with friends, having experiences in life. And that was basically it. So we spend the majority of the productive years of our life achieving something we don’t actually want.
Josh Nichols
Wow, isn’t that crazy? What a waste, right?
David Buck
So then the question is, what does satisfy? That’s a whole nother podcast episode.
Josh Nichols
Sure. Yeah. Huh. So for you, the satisfaction comes from how you go about it, rather than what you get from it. The character display.
David Buck
Absolutely. Yeah, even on the golf course now when I go play, my desire — I want to hit the ball straight. I like straight. And it turns out it’s actually quite achievable and is as much fun as I thought it would be. So it’s a pleasant surprise every time you hit a tee shot and it’s like “oh hey that one went straight” or sitting 260 yards out into a par 5 and it’s like “well if I just hit it straight up that little gut in the middle, might roll up by the green — oh look at that it did, this is fun.” I’m not the flashy guy that can hit the 6,000-yard 4-iron on 15 at the Masters, but I’m the guy that you know — those guys that go out at six o’clock in the morning at your course and they push their carts and it’s usually a threesome and they shoot 82 and they just hit it 175 yards right down the middle every time. I like that guy. I like that kind of golf. It’s simple. There’s no big numbers. It’s just down the middle and to the green and then you chip and putt. Super boring. So much fun.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, boring. Yeah. Hmm. Well, no, that’s the idea — what satisfies you is how you go about things, not what you get from the game. So you’ve got these values, these principles of how you carry yourself, how you go about things — that’s what you care about when you’re out there.
David Buck
Yes, and I’ve got a good example for that. We did a little family golf trip across Canada last June, played some of the top courses across the country — it was fantastic. One I’d never played before was a course called Greywolf. It’s one of the top 10 in Canada and it’s basically a signature hole every time you tee off — in the mountains of eastern British Columbia and is fantastic. It started to rain a little bit, it got cloudy, it got windy — we had all sorts of different kinds of conditions and it was so much fun that we get done the round and I didn’t realize what I shot. My 12-year-old is an exacting kind of human — he likes to know exactly what was shot, where, and I want the exact numbers. And he tallies up the score. He’s like, “Dad, you shot 67.” I said, no, I didn’t. I start going back through — this is a 5’7″ guy playing a 7,600-yard course in some conditions — sure enough no bogeys, maybe the one bogey — but that’s success to me. That’s how I want to play golf.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, not even knowing how it’s going as it’s going.
David Buck
Yeah, because that’s not something you can affect. You can only hit the ball that’s in front of you right now. So the closer that we can get to “can I hit that ball? Yes. Where did it go? Ooh, goody. Now I get to practice chipping.”
Josh Nichols
Mmm, man, I’m pulling up Greywolf while you’re talking and holy cow. This place is stunning.
David Buck
There is a par-3 called Cliffhanger — it’s as beautiful as the picture looks. And so we got there and it’s like, oh, so we’re actually on our way — we’re on the right side of Canada, we’re gonna make our way back to the left side — so we’re accidentally gonna swing by Greywolf again and get another round in. Oops, how did this happen?
Josh Nichols
Yeah, heck yeah, man, gosh. Okay, so if you look back on your golf career up to this point, what do you look back and say was your biggest point of success?
David Buck
It was my first tournament win — first pro tournament win. I was 16 years old playing Sahalee Country Club in Seattle. I don’t know how to describe it other than it just was perfect — as far as you looked at a shot, I want to play this shot and you hit it. I made seven birdies and an albatross. It was the easiest round of golf I’ve ever played. There have been other rounds that rivaled that but that first one… I remember the 15th hole was where I made albatross — two drivers into the cup — and then on the 16th hole driver-driver. This is 1998, we didn’t have the driver tech that we do now. I had this 767 speed-slot driver — it was a POS but it had a really low pointed bottom and you could hit it off the fairway everywhere. It would be a mini-driver of today. Knocked it into the cup all the way up the left side into the hole — it was one of those “did that go in? I can’t tell, maybe it went over the back” — and so everybody’s still bagging the fairway and I’m literally running up the hole to go check the hole. So the next hole I put one right down the middle — I was always shorter guy, always put it down the middle but not very far — and I had 167 yards into a dogleg right, bunker on the right, pin back right, tucked. I played this little baby cut punch six-iron and my caddy says “after that high the last hole, let’s see what you really made of” and I remember thinking at that point “this is going to be right beside the hole” and just going through the motions — executed the punch six-iron cut right beside the hole, six feet, knocked it in for birdie. I’ve worked to re-emulate that for the rest of my life, but I’m getting a lot closer to it now than I have in a long time.
Josh Nichols
And the re-emulation is the feeling that you had while you played — just effortlessness.
David Buck
Yeah. And I believe that the closer you get to the true action that you can affect right in front of you is the closest that you can get to being in the zone.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, the true action right in front of you — explain that, what do you mean?
David Buck
I can only affect the shot that I’m hitting right now. So look at your pre-shot routine — you’re big into pre-shot routine and you’ve got some great content on that by the way. When you’re before you… you’re standing behind the ball and you’re looking at distance and yardage and wind and elevation and slope and you’re making decisions. As you make those decisions you’re checking those things off so that they are not questions anymore — you’re making solid decisions. Okay, this is what I’m doing. Then there’s a switch. Now it gets into “okay, now I got to set up to the ball squarely and hit the shot I’ve already decided on.” If I stick to those decisions, I can execute that shot. If there’s doubt that comes up and I have to make different decisions, that’s when you have to back away. But the difference is I’ve made the decisions, they’re gone. I don’t even have to look at the target anymore. It doesn’t matter. I’m now focused on the actual target, which is the ball in front of me. And the more that I can say “center of ball to center of clubface” — well, I can do that. What I can’t do is bank it off the slope at the green down there. That’s the result of the action. The actual action that I can do is I can hit the shot. So go hit that shot and then walk up and go hit that shot and then walk up and go hit that shot. And at the end of that there’s going to be a score. But it’s a resulting action, not an active action.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. Wow. Yeah, the score is made up of all of these singular moments. The Masters every time when they put out Ludwig’s full round or Scottie’s round — they’ll have a ticker at the bottom left that just says shot 1, shot 2, shot 3… it’s not hole 2 shot 1, it’s shot 53 by hole 15.
David Buck
Answer me this question: Why when somebody is eight under would they feel more nervous? Why would it make a difference? Why would the shots you hit earlier have anything to do with the shot you’re hitting on 17?
Josh Nichols
Right, shouldn’t.
David Buck
If you were seven over, would you have that kind of pressure?
Josh Nichols
Right? Yeah, those eight under, seven over — those are kind of figments of our imagination. We’re casting into the future too where we say “if I par out, I will shoot this much under par.” And that’s totally future — not even thinking about the end of this golf shot, you’re thinking about the end of this entire round.
David Buck
It gets worse, Josh, because what if some guy on 18 makes a 60-footer? Now you’re like “well, I didn’t win.” Well, you can’t affect his golf shots. So now you’re worried and you’re affecting — you’re saying that your success is now based on somebody else’s actions.
Josh Nichols
Return to the truth. Okay David Buck, Big Swing Kings — what’s all of that? What do you want to share with people?
David Buck
Yeah, basically Big Swing Kings — everything, whether it’s YouTube or TikTok or Instagram or website or the hat — basically my goal is to help people have more fun on the golf course. I believe that having more fun is not only shooting lower scores, but knowing why you hit the ball where you hit the ball. Because if you play golf at all, you know it’s a continual work in progress. It’s a continual struggle. And maybe success for you is breaking 100, maybe it’s 90, maybe it’s 80, maybe it’s 65. But the fact remains that it’s a continual effort and it’s simple. So I try to share simple golf stuff that is going to make you have more fun on the golf course. And I do it in a bunch of different ways — basically however you want to learn, I do that. Yeah, there’s some stuff for sale. There’s a whole bunch of free stuff. Join me on TikTok and watch some crazy lives with answering every question under the sun. So really it’s just about trying to spread some fun into the game. Take the serious out of it.
Josh Nichols
I’ve been consuming a lot of your stuff in prep for this and I leave happier after watching your videos. I’m not like “this is more, this is confusing, this is hard.” Yeah, you’re doing your job. You’re doing your job, man. So keep it up. Keep bringing the intensity and the joy. This has been a pleasure, David. Thank you so much.
David Buck
Josh, thank you for your channel. Thanks for all the stuff that you guys are putting out and helping people think through the game of golf. Appreciate it.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, man. Thanks, David.
