Podcast Transcript
Josh Nichols
Golf doesn’t reward effort golf rewards freedom small quote, but
Cameron Strachan
Yeah.
Cameron
Yeah.
Cameron
Yep.
Josh Nichols
Expound on that, explain that, flesh that one out.
Cameron
Well, I mean, could talk about all this, I could talk about this for weeks and years and days and hours. But I honestly think that as adult male, as a general rule, there’s definitely ladies play golf and some of my best customers and clients are ladies. Ladies tend to not over complicate things as much. Men, on the other hand, they like to overthink. And so we think as a man, we’ve got to…
consciously control, we’ve got to think, we’ve got to analyse, we have to go into the nth degree of whatever it is we do, for the most part, not everyone’s different, but for the most part, I’m being very general here. And when it comes to golf slash the mental game, we tend to do the same thing, we overthink it, we over analyse and…
The more I played golf, the more I researched, the more I spoke to learning experts and sports scientists, the more I realized that, hey, and just through experience as well, Josh, yeah, if you, golf doesn’t reward the overthinker, it really doesn’t. mean, you get lots of, that’s if golf, playing good golf, playing well, playing consistently, maximizing your potential is important to you. Some people, don’t care, they just wanna…
analyse and think and go into all that detail. But if you want to play your best, at some point you’ve got to let go and that’s the freedom part. And when you let go and not over analyse, simplify your golf game, whether it be your mental game, your swing, your strategy, whatever it is, it opens up a whole new world.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, and you mentioned, funnily enough, in the acknowledgements, I thought, you know, this book’s pretty interesting. I bet the acknowledgements even have something interesting. And in them you said, and finally, a quick thanks to the traditional golf instruction industry for giving me a never-ending stream of confusing, overcomplicated, fix-it-heavy nonsense to push against
You’ve been a gift, seriously. So I can’t tell if that is sarcasm, the you’ve been a gift part, or if there is truly something that has been a gift from it. Tell me more, like what’s going on there?
Cameron
Well, it’s the cheeky Aussie coming out in me, that. So, Aussies were a bit naughty. That’s why the name of the book. Well, I’m so happy that I came up with it, because I was always much, so I’ve written 17 or 18 books, the first, oh, that’s what I talk about, the first eight or nine or 10 weren’t very good, and it took that many to get good at writing like anything. You can’t, it’d be very hard to write a bestseller first go, unless you’re naturally gifted or something. But yeah, it’s…
Josh Nichols
Ha
Cameron
If you just got to look at TikTok or YouTube shorts or Facebook and just look at all the many millions and there’s millions of them now, there’s probably billions of instructions. And I’ve found that over the journey, they’re just getting more and more complicated, more advanced, more crazy if you like, Josh. It’s a constant stream of incredible.
content for someone like myself who has spent 25 plus years trying to simplify the game. There’s just there’s no shortage of it and I’ve I’ve got to the point where I don’t look at
I don’t have TikTok. I use Facebook for promotional purposes, but I don’t go on Facebook. But if I ever pick up an old golf magazine or get bored for two minutes and I look at Instagram or something, yeah, there’s so many complicated theories. And I find it quite comical. And if you actually can look at those from 40,000 feet down and you actually look at it with a clear mind, you go, what the bloody hell are these people doing?
You’ve got some of those weird exercises and drills. I find it quite comical, to be honest.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, when you zoom out and you take yourself out of the golf bubble, if you just kind of pretend for a sec that you’re a non-golfer and you see you just happened upon a swing instructor drill or something, you would say, what is that sport? That is not a sport, that’s an exercise in just, yeah, you said comical. So that makes me wonder your thought on
swing instruction in general or swing instructors? it are I don’t I don’t know what to ask here but I guess I’m just curious do you think swing instructors are pointless to to make a blunt question?
Cameron
No, and it’s not an attack on golf instructors. think you’ve got, again, I could talk for hours and hours on this, you’ve got instruction and you’ve got coaching and I think the two are very different. A coach is more of a mentor, a guide, and a coach comes from a position where the student is a talented one. And that’s really, important to me. I’m so passionate about that. I could talk about my own story there or see young kids, but the coach comes from a position where
the student is talented. Instructor typically is coming more like a teacher and they fill you up. So the teacher feels obligated to give you lots of information. And again, this is very general, but yeah.
The average person goes for a golf lesson and they get their swing put on video and then the instructor’s role tends to be, hey, I’ll give you 15 things to work on. Hey, your swing plane’s off, your grip’s wrong, your stance is wrong, your spine angle. Jesus, mate, what are you doing with your spine angle? That’s so bad, you can’t play with that. Your alignment’s off, your backswing’s going inside, blah, blah, blah. And then before you know it, you’ve got 10, 15 things to work on and that’s filling up, that’s teaching. And it has its role at times, but a coach might just
work on one thing and a coach, probably the gift of a really good coach is the ability to be quiet. Silence is where the magic happens. So that’s where the student can go. Thoughts go in their head and it’s hard at times because you want to say something, especially when you’re coaching young people, kids, the, the, the, the quietness, the silence can be magical.
And typically in our modern world with TikTok and YouTube and things, there’s not a lot of silence. mean, it make a very boring, on the first admit, it’d make very boring YouTube video, but it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It can be very powerful. Because we’re all in, we’re amazing learning machines. Humans are hardwired to learn. We learn to walk, we learn to talk, we learn to ride a bike, we drive cars, we can do amazing things. You’ve only got to watch kids over at the local park, know, throwing a gridiron or…
kicking a football, hitting balls, throwing rocks, hitting rocks with sticks, they’re really good at it. They all figure it out pretty much really well, but at some point in our development, we talk too much, we give too many instructions and we lose the magic.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, if we sat a kid down in front of a screen and we explained, here’s how you ride a bike, and then say, all right, go do it, there’s no chance, right? Or even while you’re in the act of helping a kid ride a bike, helping your son or daughter ride a bike, if you’re just explaining, yelling at them, no, this is what you’re supposed to do, do this, do this, do this, this, do this, they’re gonna be a pretzel.
And they’re going have no clue what to do. But instead, if you guide them through the process, let them fail, let them fall, let them make mistakes, learn from their mistakes, they kind of find their own way. And I love, I don’t know if I’ll be able to find it quickly right here, but something you said in the book, it was beautiful. Let’s see.
Golf is way too hard to swing like someone else and way too beautiful to not swing like you. I thought that was an awesome, a couple of sentences that was, it didn’t seem like a couple of sentences that would be in a book titled, Unf*** Your Golf Brain. But the idea of you, your own natural ability is going to be better than trying to be like an ideal.
So.
Cameron
Yeah.
Josh Nichols
So I think one of the main things that I’m interested in about your kind of thinking is something you said was, I’m too inconsistent to trust my own swing. I don’t know where the ball’s going. I’m not good enough. My swing’s not good enough. Or it won’t hold up over time. I’m just gonna get worse. so.
So for that kind of golfer who says, I can’t just trust my swing, it must be easy for you to say, you’re a good player, but I can’t trust my swing. So I don’t know, what would you tell that person?
Cameron
I’ve heard that argument about 400,000 times. And what I say to people, well, yeah, I get what you’re saying, but what if I told you back 25, 30 years ago, I was exactly like you, even though my handicap was three or four and you’re 13 or 14, I was exactly like you. I had no confidence. I would try really hard. I used to worry about my swing. I thought I had to get to the first tee and do everything right, like.
Josh Nichols
Ha
Cameron
consciously control the backswing plane and the body pivot and forearm rotation and all the blah blah. I was exactly like you. But then one day I said, no, I’ve had enough of this. I just don’t want to do it anymore. My quick story there is that I was that golfer. So I was only a fairly young, you know, maybe 18 or 19 years of age. And a member gave me the book, The Intergama Golf. And I still think it’s one of the best books ever written. And it astounds me that more golfers haven’t read it.
It’s probably one of the best selling books of all time, but if you play golf, should go and read it. It’s brilliant. He’s got, there was an updated version many years ago. It’s quite a big blue book rather than the little green one. Go and get it. Awesome book. But anyway, I read that book and it just smacked me between the eyes. It was the first time I’d ever heard of natural learning. And…
Yeah, it changed. I went 14 rounds in a row of power better, something I’d never done before, basically from reading the book, because I got out of my own way. So that’s what I tell people. It can happen relatively quickly when you stop trying to control emotion. The thing with adults and especially adult males is we want instant gratification. We want to try something once and we think we can go to the golf course and play incredibly well. And it does happen. In my case, it sort of happened because I those 14 rounds in a row. But we’ve got to give our learning system time to adapt. If you’ve been
consciously controlling your action. If you go to the golf course, worried about your swing, every time you hit a good shot or a bad shot or somewhere in between and you want to analyze what you did right, what you did wrong.
If you get away from that, it’s gonna take some time. Your brain’s gonna take, your learning system’s gonna take a little bit of time to adapt. So you gotta give yourself some time. You gotta breathe, and there comes that space again, that silence. Just give yourself some time to go and play and have some fun. I think no scorecard. Don’t play off the back tees. Don’t play with a guy that you can never beat who’s really competitive. Go out with some mates you enjoy, whose company you enjoy, or go out by yourself. Go out at four o’clock in the afternoon when the course is quiet, and just play golf. Have some fun with it. Explore, experiment.
But leave the technique in the car park or in the car at home better still and go and see what happens But you’ve to give yourself some time and that’s one of the most frustrating things as as a golf coach is people For example, we’ll buy the book and then I’ll write to me and go I read your book and I played the worst of it ever happened And I’m and it’s like well you’ve read it once you probably haven’t read it all and you want you want instant gratification It doesn’t work like that. Unfortunately, I wish it did. I wish we could go and buy a pill and You know swallow it and go out and play unbelievable
golf but it’s not that hard. Learning is messy, it’s uncomfortable at times, it can be frustrating and for that reason it makes sense to me to keep simplifying and get get rid of the rubbish because the more things you add the more complicated it gets.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, you said don’t let perfect get in the way of good. So let’s say a player has a high level instructor who claims that they can help the player perfect their swing. No one says that, but just in theory, this coach is the best in the world and they’re going to make this player’s better and they’re going to play better because of it.
So that player, do you think that player is more likely to end up a better golfer working with that coach for years or quote unquote settling for good and they’re just happier? Is the difference between, well you could go for perfect and be a much better golfer but you won’t be happy or you could be a good golfer.
and you’ll be happy. Is that the difference that we’re talking here? Are you talking like better a golfer?
Cameron
Well, think all golfers, because we’re all human, we all have the same capacity to learn, we’re all learning machines, so I think it can apply to everyone. But if I can try and answer that question with an example, a real world example of who we all know, and that person, and it’s a bit of a cop out of my part, because I don’t always like using the best in the world, but anyway, in this case, I’m going to use it, is Rory McIlroy. Now, he had a pretty good year last year. He won the Masters, which, you he completed the career Grand Slam, as we all know. But he went 10 years without winning one.
which is quite a long time. And it wasn’t that he wasn’t good enough, because his skill level hasn’t really changed. I mean, he might be marginally better last year than when he was the previous nine or 10 or 12 years, whatever, but he was bloody, bloody, bloody good, really exceptionally talented. And what astounds me with him was how…
Josh Nichols
Yes.
Cameron
when you see, and again, I don’t know him personally, I’ve never seen him up close, and I don’t know his ins and outs of day-to-day life with coaching, but I have seen videos of him, I’ve seen interviews with him, and it astounded me how technical he actually was. I just…
you he’s talking about getting trapped on the downswing. I’m like, mate, you’re Rory McIlroy. Like you’ve got all the shots. Like, why would you let maybe the odd bad shot and you’re always going to bad shots. doesn’t matter how good you are, how not inside you are, you’re always going to bad shots. So I was always astounded with McIlroy and it wasn’t surprising to me that when it came to the crunch, he couldn’t quite get over the line with those majors and he wanted to win them really badly, but he had all the coaching, had all the mental people. had all the, all the best in the world, all the money in the world, essentially to make it all happen. And it took him, you know, I think he just,
over complicated. think he could now go on to bigger and better things because he’s finally got The Masters out of the way but to me he just needs to keep playing and keep hitting shots and not stress so much about his bloody backswing plane or whatever else he works on. I’d just love to see him play.
but he looks at times to me very artificial and little bit contrived and a little bit technical. I think, here’s an example that everyone will know about that highlights the fact if you disrupt your learning system and get too technical, try too hard, can, yeah, can, well, I won’t swear, but you can stuff it up.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, no, you can swear. This is a swearing episode. But you’re…
Cameron
Could I just add to Josh and if Rory McIlroy can’t make it work, right? What bloody chance do you have? This is the big thing, right? So the best And there’s golf is full of stories like that like you can look at Sevu Bellas-Diarrus way back in the 80s and 90s who tried to win the US Open and went to went to lead better and tried to perfect his technique and basically destroyed him I mean Ian Baker Finch a good Aussie player who could have been you know, could have won multiple majors, but didn’t Yeah, and it goes on and on and on and on
Josh Nichols
Right.
Josh Nichols
Okay, what about, you know, I’ll push back and let you see what you say, but what about all the players that have excelled? Maybe we can’t know, but because they’ve worked with coaches, know, Tiger Woods, Nick Faldo, those come to mind, but.
Cameron
Yeah, well, I’ve got a great story about Feldo. am sort of, I’m probably a little bit, I am a little bit older than you and Feldo was the main man back in the 90s because he’s the guy that rebuilt his swing with Leadbetter. He was a very good player before he went with Leadbetter. He nearly won multiple British Open. He was right at cut play. He was very, very good. But the thing I like about Nick Feldo was he was going through all those swing changes for two years, but you know what he did every day?
which doesn’t really get spoken about much, but every day for two years he played nine holes, one ball competition. So I’m going to argue as a learning person that that was what made him great. He actually went out there and played one ball competition, tried to hit shots. Brilliant. No one ever talks about that. Yeah. Cause the meat, it’s not a good story. The fact that he went to Leadbetter and changed his swing and rah rah rah. I don’t think his swing changed that much to be honest.
Josh Nichols
Mmm.
Josh Nichols
I didn’t even know that.
Hmm.
Cameron
Feldo, I mean I like to Feldo was amazing. Six majors, think, beat Greg Norman in 96 when Greg Norman should have won the Masters. It was one of the mornings for us in Australia. Australian golf history, terrible buddy. Old shark choked again. We didn’t really choke, he just had a bad round. look, poor old Greg. Yeah, Feldo finished pretty early. He went tried to rebuild his swing again, I believe, later into his 40s and all got too much and sort of finished pretty early.
Josh Nichols
was bad.
Cameron
Tiger Woods, another fairly good example, maybe the greatest goal forever. My argument is he’s underperformed. He went a long time without winning a major. He went 10 years as well. Now he had some other off course issues. I don’t think his body looked after him too well. I think he over trained, but that’s another story altogether. But yeah, mean, Tiger could have won 40 majors maybe. He was that good. Maybe at least 30.
Josh Nichols
Mmm.
Josh Nichols
Mmm. Wow.
Cameron
But yeah, he went a long time. But that’s how I look at it. But yeah, there’s different stories of people who improve their technique. But you look to the very best in the world, and sometimes they’re good in spite of what they get told.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, you wonder. It’s so hard to know. They’re amazing golfers who, if they just abandon all instruction, would still be amazing. So we can’t know, was it because they went to this coach that they are playing better? would they have been just as good? Or they underperformed because they went to this coach, but how can you know, right? We can’t truly know.
Cameron
No, you can’t, you can’t know. think you can talk. It’d be interesting to sit down with some of these guys who you think have underperformed potentially, or even overperformed maybe as well, but just talk to them and see what they say later in their career when they can reflect on it would be very interesting. Yeah.
Josh Nichols
But you’re.
Josh Nichols
Yes, yeah, to know, do you think that was a mistake? Kind of going to that coach. I think if someone maybe close to your heart would be Jason Day. What do you, I mean, he’s had injuries, but do think there’s something there as far as he’s overly technical or something? I don’t know if you have any thoughts on it.
Cameron
Yeah.
Cameron
think so. Jason Day, Adam Scott, I know Adam Scott. I played golf back with Adam Scott in the day and he was just phenomenal. you almost wanted to play with him and you think, what am I doing? Like, I’ve got to give it away. Like he was phenomenal. He used to swing like Tiger Woods back in the day. was just crazy. But yeah, I mean, Jason Day, I’m incredible. He gets injured a lot. There’s a worry. So why are you getting injured a lot? Like maybe some people are prone just to get injured, but I would argue that, you know, trying to force your body into positions that…
Josh Nichols
Different sport.
Cameron
aren’t suitable for you, can’t be a good thing. I think a lot of golfers over train, I’ve mentioned that with Tiger Woods. Yeah, you don’t know, but disappointing as an Aussie, because we have major drought periods where our guys don’t win a lot of events. We went for a long time. It was between, I’m just trying to think out loud, had…
Steve Elginton who was an amazing golfer, incredible golf swing and then we had Jeff Ogilvie and then we had a fairly big gap until Jason Day, about 10 years I think. And then we had Adam Scott, maybe not quite 10 years, maybe eight years. We’ve had Adam Scott and Jason Day and then we had the little Queenslander Cameron Smith who won the British Open but again it hasn’t been quite as good since.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Ogilvy was 09 or something. Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Nichols
Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you listed a bunch of golfers kind of midway through the book as far as an example of the crazy variety of golf swings. I want to list them off because I think it’s a cool list. it was Jim Feerick, Bubba Watson, Eamonn Darcy. I’ve got more on Eamonn Darcy in a sec. John Daly, Raymond Floyd, Bryson DeChambeau, Scottie Schieffler.
Cameron
Yeah.
Cameron
Yeah.
Cameron
Yeah?
Josh Nichols
Sergio, Bernard Longer, Lee Westwood, Colin Montgomery, Embi Park, Mo Martin, Shen Shen Feng. I love how you kind of said, Jim Fierick looks like he’s folding a lawn chair as he’s swinging and Colin Montgomery’s all stiff and Eamon Darcy. I hadn’t even heard of Eamon Darcy until I said, who? So I Googled or I looked him up on YouTube and indeed it’s a crazy swing.
Cameron
All arms yet.
Cameron
Really.
Cameron
Yeah.
Josh Nichols
Just the fact that I actually just had someone on the episode before you who said, the higher up you get in the world rankings, the more variety there are in golf swings, the more different golf swings are. The lower you get in the world rankings, the more uniform and robotic and you go on the range of a corn fairy tour event, everyone looks the same. On a PJ Tour range,
You’re seeing all kinds of variety and stuff.
Cameron
Well, I’ve said something similar for a long time. If you go to the secondary tours, even maybe a mini tour, and you look at the pros hitting balls on the practice fairway, you wouldn’t know it. If you didn’t know who they were, if they were all blacked out, their faces, you couldn’t tell. You probably would think that these guys are the best players in the world. Yeah, so I’ve never said it quite as well as the previous podcaster guy you had on, but yeah, it’s brilliant. It’s so true. Because it just highlights our learning system is that those guys have mastered
Josh Nichols
You’re right.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, yeah, I-
Cameron
the goal for them and their swing just does what it’s just a vehicle to get the ball from A to B.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, you said the swing is a means to an end. So when someone says the way to play well is to go through a good process, a good pre-shot routine, think the right things, make a good swing or something, do you disagree with the general talk there?
Cameron
Yeah.
Cameron
Only a little bit. You need a pre-shot routine. You need to be good mentally, but we can just keep it simple. So I’ve got the lazy loop. I write about the lazy loop in the book and it’s basically a five-step process and I’ve got to remember it now. But yeah, work out what you want to do. You basically walk in and execute. Well, you walk in, simply you can use a mental distraction technique to keep your mind off the swing and all the stuff that golfers like to think about. Basically, hit the ball, accept the result and repeat.
Like really, you just hit the ball. I mean, you’re into the day, you work out what you want to do, choose a simple club that will get the job done. You’re not trying to hit a three-wood out of a divot from a downhill lie 245 yards over water to a tight pin. Like, you’re not going to do that. So you hit the simplest shot and execute and then repeat.
And you don’t want to start stressing about it and try and change your swing. mean, golfers, have this awful bloody internal dialogue about what you did right, what you did wrong. And then we try and fix it for the next shot. So it’s just a never ending cycle of hit a shot, fix it, hit a shot, fix it. What did I do right? What did I do wrong? And it’s quite tiring. It can be exhausting. So a good thing I like to say is you should be able to walk off the course feeling energized and have more energy when you walk off the course rather than feeling completely fatigued and exhausted and over it.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, the difference, yeah.
Cameron
of the course really tired and fatigued, then it’s a chance that you’re just, woo, you’re thinking too much, which is not a good thing. So to answer your question, Josh, and I do waffle a bit, don’t I, I’ve realised, keep it simple. Like your golf swing should be simple. The process for around the golf swing can be simple. Your process for strategy can be really simple and your mental game can be simple. Why can’t it be simple? Why do we have to have a 28 step process? Why can’t we just have basically, well, I’ve got five, but I reckon we could summarise that to three. Yeah.
Josh Nichols
Mm. Mm.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, Yeah.
Cameron
Choose a shot, feel the shot, hit the shot. You know, that’s it. And repeat. So the repeat’s the most important phase in golf, I believe. Well, there’s two important phases for golf that don’t really get spoken about. One is the walk to the ball. I think that’s absolutely key. Massively important, the walk to the ball, because from the time you choose your shot to the time you get to the ball, that’s a gap where lots of bad thoughts can creep in. You can get tense, you can start analysing, you can start panicking. So that’s important. Doesn’t really get spoken about a lot.
Josh Nichols
Mmm.
Cameron
in golf as a general rule maybe some people speak about it. I’m quite passionate about it and then the repeat phase so after you’ve hit the shot and you’ve done everything well you don’t need to you can’t improve on perfection so just you’ve just got to do the same boring s*** time after time so one of my favorite sayings is boring golf gives you sexy results so doing the boring things and you know you speak to here’s some of the greatest coaches of all time they all talk about you know in basketball it’s
Josh Nichols
Hmm
Cameron
just defence really and maybe some shooting but that’s it but you’ve got to the good teams do the boring stuff really well. Defence in football and basketball and those sports and soccer is boring but it’s important obviously but the teams that do well have those boring things you know down pat but you do it long enough and well enough you get sexy results but most of us are trying to look for the sexy things up front.
you know the swing chains, the quick tip, the new club, some new tip out of golf digest that Scotty Scheffler did last week when he won the British Open or whatever it is, that’s sexy stuff but it doesn’t always lead to sexy results.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, yeah, that’s, you know, it’s such a, it’s such a psychologically difficult thing because we as humans love control and we love doing and we love more. And if we, when we let go of control and we, we do less and have less, we feel like we’re lacking and
There’s a certain amount of fear when you say let go of control because you feel like, if I’m not controlling where this ball is going, then it could go somewhere bad. So I need to control where this ball is going so that it doesn’t go somewhere bad. But you’re saying by controlling, you’re making it more likely for the ball to go somewhere bad.
Cameron
Yeah, we don’t really do anything else with that sort of control in life. Like we don’t get into our car and reverse out onto a busy street with stupid amounts of control. If anything, when it comes to driving a motor vehicle, we’re the opposite. We’re actually too relaxed, too free flowing. We drive around like lunatics. know, the radio’s on or we listen to a podcast, a great podcast like yours, Josh. You know, we’re driving a Golf and we’re almost, you know, we’re two bloody two steps or one step from, you know, having a car crash.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, we should control more.
Josh Nichols
Ha ha ha!
Cameron
But we don’t really analyze things, other skills, like we do with golf. And that’s why the main theme of the book is lazy and stupid. So it’s not a dig at golfers. You don’t have to be stupidly lazy, but you just got to be lazy enough that you’re only going to focus on the most important things and you’re stupid enough to forget all the rest. That’s basically what it’s about. And my book is based on a guy called Ross. He’s a real life golfer that I grew up with.
Josh Nichols
Yeah.
Cameron
intimidating as all get out he was a big guy big burly guy but he just didn’t mess around with his golf he he just got on with it and he the stories and the way he played and you know his mannerisms his swing was awful but yeah he was unbelievably good and books based loosely based on him
lazy and stupid and that was him to a tee and that’s what I’d consider myself lazy and stupid. I don’t have lessons, I don’t put my video swing on video, I really couldn’t give two hoots what my swing looks like but I’m playing later today and I can guarantee I’ll stay on the first tee, I’ll pick my target, I’ll walk up and I’ll swing for the fences and then I’ll repeat and I’ll do that for the rest for the whole round and you know I rarely embarrass myself but I know I might not play stupidly well but I I won’t play stupidly bad either it’ll be
most likely in the middle and I’ll have a good time, which is important. And I think that’s another point missed in golf. The satisfaction, the enjoyment and the learning that can come from the game, most of us miss out on it, which is quite sad.
Josh Nichols
That’s something that I’ve realized over the years is there’s a deep sense of satisfaction when you trust yourself. And on the reverse, there’s this, was that really me that played well today or was it me trying really hard and my swing instructor playing well through me and this swing technique and
There’s not as much satisfaction there when you think, man, I was trying really hard controlling every shot and, you know, happened to shoot a good score. There’s much more satisfaction, contentment with I let myself swing. I let myself play at the way that I was meant to play, the way that I was meant to swing. And that’s a truly satisfying thing because you’re…
I’m trusting myself. I’m letting myself do what I know I’m capable of. that’s the Ross character.
When you describe him, it sounds like almost apathy or not caring. Would you describe Ross as apathetic or like he don’t really care?
Cameron
Yeah, he just, he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anyone else but himself. So, but he didn’t really care about his score. He probably did to a certain degree because he had a strategy and he didn’t want to go out and shoot 85. Like he wouldn’t be happy because he was a scratch golfer or below scratch golfer. yeah, but he just, didn’t care what anyone thought about his game. The fact that he’d roll up late, probably hung over from the night before, shoelaces untied, walked to the first tee. You know, there’d be a few…
It’d be a heckle Cameron. I’m gonna beat the pants off you today. You guys are useless I know you’ve been practicing all week and you know, he’d on our mental Our mental weaknesses big time when I say we was myself and my other buddies. Yeah, and he’d go and play And and he was just phenomenal just absolutely phenomenal that was like I didn’t I didn’t figure it out at the time
Josh Nichols
Did he?
Cameron
I just had no idea. It was years later when I figured out what Ross’s secret was. At least I believe I found out what his secret was. But you talk about trust. Trust is amazing. It’s an amazing skill set to have. But you can’t have trust.
if you’re gonna try and consciously control your golf swing from day dot, that’s the opposite of trust. So you’re fighting, there’s conflict, there’s a disconnect there, so you can’t have it. It’s a bit like when someone says, go and have fun. You know, you’ve gotta have fun, enjoy the golf game. You’ve got a big event today, it’s the final round of the club championships. Go and have fun, but if you’re gonna go out and try and consciously control your motion and worry about hitting a bad shot off the first tee,
be concerned about your grip or your swing or whatever it is or worry about your playing partner. You can’t have fun there either. It’s really hard because you’re fighting your system, your learning system.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, you’re you’re almost you’re basically regurgitating like a like someone who who crammed for a test the night before just to try to keep the answers in their short-term memory, so I’m just gonna try to like Reenact my study session right here in the test and that’s not gonna last for the long term
Cameron
Yep.
Yeah, and we’re not building bridges here. Like if you’re a bridge engineer, you want him to have sleepless nights. You know, you want him to go over every detail 4,000 times. Hang on, is that bolt quite strong enough? And you want him to look at it in minute detail and go over it again and again and again. Or a surgeon, you want him to panic and stress about your upcoming operation. golf is not that though. It’s a sport, it’s a motor skill that we need to perform somewhat automatically and instinctively.
Josh Nichols
Yes.
Cameron
had great conversations with surgeons. played at a fancy club in Melbourne when I lived in Melbourne and I played with lot of surgeons, a lot of doctors and they loved chatting to me about golf. And one guy said, Cameron, you are so right. said, even with surgery, and this guy operated on people at a very high level, was world-class surgeon. He said, I think about the surgery, I go over the notes, I mentally rehearse, but when it comes to surgery, I do it, it’s automatic.
and he spoke about having to do a five centimeter incision on the patient. He said, people couldn’t believe I just went, choop, five centimeters. He did it without, didn’t get the ruler out. He said, if I got the ruler out, I’d be tight.
Josh Nichols
You’re right.
Cameron
He goes, it’s flows. So he loved the way I approached golf and he took it on board and he had some breakthroughs, but it was very interesting talking to a world-class surgeon who had a very important job. But even the art of surgery became more of a flowing motion rather than being controlled. He didn’t analyze as much, so it’s very interesting.
Josh Nichols
Yes.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, the performance, or, okay, let me ask you this. That’s a really good example. So we take someone like Bryson, where he arguably has more going on in his head than anybody else. And you you even listed him as like a unique swing.
compared to anybody else. And so why would we try to make our swings perfect when he’s not making his swing perfect, his is his own thing. does he, do you think that, man, what am I getting at here? The idea that you’re super mechanical, super perfectionistic in practice and
then you’re lazy and stupid when you play. Is that how you see it or do you think you need to be lazy and stupid all the time, like even with practice?
Cameron
Yeah.
Cameron
Well, I think it’s a great question. Some people are going to be more analytical. So I think Bryson’s magic is that he’s not scared to do his own thing. So he plays golf his own way. That’s the first thing. The second thing is you can’t tell me he’s not letting go fully when he gets on the first tee. Like he’s more free flowing, more natural than any golfer, almost any golfer out there at the moment. it’s phenomenal. And you can see it on YouTube. It’s just unbelievable.
Josh Nichols
Yep, swings for the fences.
Cameron
He swings for the fences and you just can’t hit. Long drive guys as a general are brilliant to study, I think, because they all, at some point, let go. Because you can’t hit the ball as far as you can without letting go. But you can also let go to that same degree with a three-foot putt. But again, not many people talk about it because we’re tight, we’ve got to get it in, we can’t miss. So we’re tight, we’re controlling. But you can actually be quite.
Josh Nichols
Yes. Yes.
Cameron
relaxed and free-flowing on a two-foot putt as well as a 450-yard bomb. So that’s the second thing Bryson. He’s fully bloody natural instinctive. He figures it out in his golf lab at home, certainly does. He’s a scientist, he likes thinking about it and he probably gets off on that. So that’s Bryson. he’s matching his natural style with how he plays golf. I personally believe he could probably be even better if he just toned it down a little bit. He talks about his pitching a lot. Have you seen any of his videos, Josh?
Josh Nichols
No, some, some, some,
Cameron
No, he talks about his pitching like he’s driving unbelievable world-class and he gets 100 yards out and he starts talking about, my pitching’s no good and I’m like, mate, just pitch the ball 100 yards, like you know how to do it. So I think he could get better at that and he keeps telling himself he’s no good at pitching, well, he’s gonna start living and breathing that a little bit. But I don’t think his stats show that he’s horrifically bad at it. But then again, if I could hit the ball 400 yards, I don’t know if I’d worry too much about not being the world’s best at 100 yards. But anyway, that’s.
just my opinion on Bryson. Brilliant. He does his own thing. That’s his magic. And he absolutely swings for the fences. He is lazy and stupid on the golf course. But you don’t have to be lazy and stupid off the golf course if it doesn’t suit me. Like I don’t, I don’t, I’ve never got into golf club.
Josh Nichols
Mmm, man, that’s
Cameron
know, stats and specs, like people tell you what sort of shafts have you got. I go, I don’t know, these ones, that’s what I use. I think they’re stiff. I don’t know what my lie angle, I don’t know my lofts and liar. Couldn’t tell you what my lofts and liar. My golf clubs are from 2011, I haven’t changed them, probably not about to. But if I was more like Bryce, then I probably would go down that rabbit hole. But yeah, at some point, the magic has to be letting it go on the golf course. Be lazy and stupid.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. Me too.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, yeah you you have a four part matrix in the in the book where there’s There’s lazy and hard-working down the left side and stupid and smart on the top and and you know at the cross section of each is You you call a flowing assassin would be the stupid and lazy the anxious tinkerer would be the smart and lazy
The grinder with glimpses is the stupid or hardworking and the stuck and frustrated is the smart hardworking. So I was reading that and I noticed something in myself that I didn’t even realize was I don’t think I’ve, I’ve gotten to a pretty high level, but I think I got to a pretty high level in spite of being the way that I was. I think back then I was stupid and hardworking.
So like I didn’t really know what to do. I just kind of like blind faith trusted my coach and just tell me what to do and I’m just gonna do it. But I never had that freedom because I was just kind of always reenacting and doing a technique. But now I know more and I know what I do wrong and I know what I’m supposed to do. I know what I’m supposed to think. So now I’m maybe smart and lazy.
Or I’m smart and hardworking or something. now I’m overly analytical. When I get to the golf course, I feel like this is my one chance to play well because I don’t get to play that much. So I need to control and make my swing perfect. I’m fixing myself the entire round. So I just realized in myself that I could have played way, way, way better if I was the stupid and lazy
kind of flowing assassin where I need to just let go when I show up and play. I’m trying to control too much.
Cameron
Yeah. So what you’ve described there perfectly is that you’re an expert at golf. Like you’re really, really good. You’re an expert. You probably go out and play. People are impressed by you. You’re way better than average, but you’re not a master. experts, expert levels here, but there’s mastery up here. And so, if you, I can guarantee you, promise you, if you were able to be a little bit more lazy and stupid on the golf course,
less worried about what did I do wrong? Because we come up with a theory on why we hit a bad shot just to justify the bad shot. It’s an ego thing more than anything. But hey, we probably don’t know why we hit the ball in the left trees. It might just been a, I don’t know, the club face was probably, for a right hander, a little bit closed. Yeah, it could be anything. It could have just been, I don’t know, a butterfly landed on the ball at the moment of impact or a bit of water. I mean, we don’t know. It could be anything.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, there’s 15 things.
Josh Nichols
Sure, exactly.
Cameron
So you can get past that, I think you’ll take your game from expert to mastery. And that’s a big gap. It’s probably a big gap between expert and mastery than expert and mediocre or average, I would say, yeah. And no doubt those players we watch on the PJ Tour and live and all over the world on the ladies tours who are winning tournaments and playing unbelievable, they’re a level of between mastery and expert. But the ones who are really good, yeah, there’s no doubt they’re…
Josh Nichols
Mmm. No kidding.
Cameron
and those golfers that you mentioned earlier in the book, or the ones with the funky swings, to me they’re my heroes and they’re playing golf at a level of mastery, mostly because they’ve got the ability to trust what they do, their swing. I mean, can imagine Eamonn Darcy today, a guy like him, warming up at his college or on an amateur event, what would the pros do to him? And so I’ve argued for years and years and years if that golfer was me.
back at the same age as me, back in the 90s in Melbourne, going through the golf academies and going through the, they wouldn’t allow it. They would say, mate, you can’t swing like that. You have to be more like Stuart Appleby or Nick Feldo and go and do the drills and go and do all this stuff. Cause you can’t have that. You can’t be good, but he proved that you could be. He played Ryder Cup.
And even, as you said, the top level, there’s so many weird and wonderful golf swings and yeah, it just shows that we’re human and that we can find a way to do it if we get out of our way long enough because your system will figure it out. And that’s why you need good coaching because a good coach will allow you to go down that path and explore and find what works for you.
Josh Nichols
I love what you said at the beginning was kind of an instructor starts from a position of the player there’s something wrong with the player there’s something broken about the player a coach starts from a position of assuming that the player is naturally and beautifully gifted in and of themselves we just have to like uncover it right that’s such a cool difference and I myself
Cameron
Yep, bring it out, yep.
Josh Nichols
I have to catch myself all the time kind of spewing information and saying this is how you’re supposed to do it, this is the right way to do it. just, you know, arguably I just did that earlier today with a client and it is so tempting because I haven’t personally shed myself of needing that for my own golf game or even for my own life. I’m always feeling like I’m…
I’m lacking, I’m doing something wrong, and I need to be fixed, I’m broken, so I need to be fixed in multiple areas of my life. So to shift my thinking for my own golf game to what if I’m already a really good golfer? What if I’m not broken? What if my swing is good? What if my game is good? Can I allow that? Can I go play and let myself do that?
that indeed would be really, really hard for me.
Cameron
Well, I talk about the three round challenge I have for many years. It can be three rounds, it can be five rounds, it can be one week, it can be 10 years, it doesn’t matter. Go out and play like that. Write down how you want to play and then go and do it and report back. Most of us don’t give ourselves permission to do that. So I’m standing here, I’m going to yell it from the rooftops and I have done for 20 odd years. Yeah, go and just go and play how you want. But don’t start.
Josh Nichols
Mmm.
Cameron
in your club championships. Don’t start with a competition round on a Saturday morning at your club. Start with something a little bit less stressful and just go and see what happens. Tear it up, hit the ball, have some fun with it. S***, I want to aim left and hit a big hook. Well, aim left and hit a big hook. I did a coaching lesson last year with a guy. He lived about three or four hours away from me. He paid a lot of money to come and see me.
We went and played golf. We just went ahead with a good time. Anyway, on the second or third hole, he said, oh, I’ve always thought that I had to, you know, swing this way and rotate this way through the ball, but I don’t hit it very far. And I said, well, just get up and whack it, mate. Like, tee it up and hit the thing as hard as you can. And he looked at me like I had three heads. He was like, what? Can I do that? I go, yeah, tee it up and hit the ball. And anyway, he got up there and he was a new vehicle. He was a new guy. He just got up there and he swung freely, ripped it.
And we didn’t talk about golf for the rest of the day. We played nine holes. He paid a lot of money to come and see me. I basically told him to hit the ball harder, mate, and don’t worry about it. If I break it down, I mean, it was probably a little bit more than that, but not much more. But that’s the magic of silence and not over-coaching him. I’ve never seen him again. He wrote to me and said, mate, I’ve never played better. I’m hitting the ball longer. That’s what I wanted. You’ve freed up my swing. I still hit bad shots, but I hit a lot of good ones. And to me, that’s success.
Josh Nichols
Hahaha!
Yeah.
Cameron
Told him basic, one basic thing. But he thought he had to hit the ball longer by getting into positions and swinging in certain formula. But I killed that idea, yeah. Simple. Permission, yeah, it’s powerful. Well, I might write that down, just write a book on that.
Josh Nichols
giving yourself permission. That’s the hardest thing.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, kind of, I’m allowed to play ugly golf. I’m allowed to be myself. That is so foreign to most of us.
Cameron
It is, in the Western world it is. Like the Western adult world where we think we have to do everything right, we have to work hard, we have to do everything right. Yeah, it’s hard, it makes it hard. And so I actually counter that.
that statement about permission with somebody who thinks, oh no, I can’t do that, but how’s your game now, buddy? How do you play right now? Is it beautiful? Is it flowing? Is it powerful? Or is it a bit ugly? And most people say, well s***, now I think about it. I’ve been trying to play to this formula for, I’ve had golfers, clients who’ve been.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. How’s that working out for you?
Cameron
going down the way for 50 years 50 can you imagine doing something for 50 years and not really having any really major level of enjoyment? Honestly it’s a it’s it’s a my hat goes off to them like it’s unbelievable I couldn’t do it but but they do it and then all of sudden you tell them hang on you don’t have to do it that way you’ve got you can play any way you want and then they like oh it’s like a weight comes off their shoulders and
Josh Nichols
Yeah, there’s some respect there.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, you said in the book, it almost feels this should be illegal, right? Is this legal?
Cameron
Yeah, the guy said that to me. He goes, it feels illegal. that isn’t, I mean, it’s a compliment to me and I took it as a compliment. But when you actually think about it, I’ve actually told the guy to play more relaxed and free flowing golf and let his natural instincts shine through and maybe get an increased level of enjoyment. And he did it. And he had an unbelievable score and he thought it was illegal. He felt it was illegal.
Josh Nichols
That’s.
Kinda sad.
Cameron
Now know what he was trying to say, but it’s just the language is very interesting. Yeah, that was the point I was trying to make. And again, it’s a great point.
Josh Nichols
Sure. yeah, yeah.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, I mean, it’s crazy to think that it’s a radical statement to tell someone, just play your game, swing freely, have fun. that’s, hmm. Those phrases don’t come out of my mouth very often, because it’s more like.
work your process or work your plan and there’s good, have a good strategy, there is those things. But I forget to even mention the, just be yourself out there and have fun.
Cameron
Absolutely.
Cameron
Yeah, and you can’t have fun again and you can’t trust your swing if you’ve got a million things going on in your head. but you’ve got to like everything you’ve got to experience it. You’ve got to put it into practice and you’ve got to commit to it and that takes discipline and a little bit of resilience. But yeah, you’ve got to put into practice and that’s why I wrote the book and that’s why I do what I do. Because I think it’s for me, again, I was a brand new golfer when I figured it all out, it was just chalk and cheese. I could never play well when it counted.
So I could go and one of my first tournaments I played in, a big tournament, I went in the practice round, think I shot five or six under in the practice round, and I was playing with a couple of really good players and I thought, yeah, I could win this thing. And I missed the cut, like I shot 84 or something in the first round, it was complete disaster. And it still annoys me, that was like 30 years ago or longer. But yeah, I could never play well when it counted. it used to infuriate me, and I counted that by practicing harder and putting more s*** into my brain.
until I realised, well hang on, I don’t need to keep adding stuff, let’s take stuff away. Less is more, all those cliches, but they’re true. And so what I’ve tried to do is yeah, give offers a roadmap on how to do it and it works well for me. And as you can tell, I’m probably quite passionate about it, but yeah, when I hear most in the industry…
they want to add stuff and complicate it. It’s like, oh, just why don’t you try something a little bit different if you’re struggling. Some people, and there’s a very small percentage, and my research shows there’s about 2%, only 2 % of golfers can get away with all the rubbish. They can do whatever they want. They can think and analyse and control, and they’re pretty good. They’re okay. And unfortunately, my opinion is those 2 % write all the golf instruction manuals, they’re all the big-name coaches and whatever else, but yeah.
Josh Nichols
They’re in their echo chamber. Hmm. Man, that’s, that it’s so, okay, is this, is it too good to be true to say just swing? Is that, it seems too good to be true. Like it’s too kind of hand wavy, just go play, everything will be great. Is that, is it, it’s not too good to be true?
Cameron
I’ve battled for that for 25 years, yeah. Is it too good to be true? But I keep proving it. I walk my talk. Yeah, I speak to golfers almost every day. I’ve got testimonials and stories and…
pages of it, it’s unbelievable. Because we’re learning machines, so when you stop all the rubbish, you learn. So you’re still getting better. get, Galway, Tim Galway in his amazing book, The Inner Game of Golf, which I referenced earlier, has the pedal, performance, enjoyment, learning, triangle. So most of us just focus on performance, which is swing and technique, and that’s what I refer to that as. But you’ve also got enjoyment, you’ve also got learning, you’ve to have everything in equal measure. When you can do that,
Yeah, you’re almost the perfect golfer. So, yep, you can have performance, you can have the enjoyment, but importantly, you get the learning and that’s how you get better. The learning is key. We don’t really learn when we try and bombard ourselves with technical theories constantly, shot after shot. And for most, for many golfers, golf could be a bloody, must be exhausting, must be very tiring because every single shot, it’s a full rundown of what happened. I see it all the time, it at the driving range.
You should see how I practice. I just bloody get up there and whack the ball and I get good at it. So I’ve learned how to do it and hit the ball on the trees. Oh well, it’s just a bad shot. And that’s what Ross did. That’s what Ross taught me so well. Yeah, he just hit a bad shot. goes, Cameron, it’s a bad shot. Don’t worry about it. Move on. And so he didn’t stress. He didn’t put any emotional energy into it. And so it was just a bad shot. Nine times out of 10. And we see this all the time. We hit a ball out of bounds. What happens when you grab the next ball? What do we do nine times out of 10 or 99 times out of 100? What happens?
Josh Nichols
Yeah.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, second man is always better.
Cameron
we rip it down the middle of the fairway, it happens all the time. You miss a two foot part and you grab the ball and hit it again, it always goes in the second time. So that’s how Ross played, but he did it with his first shot most of the time. And if he did hit a bad shot, he just brushed it off. was almost, yeah, it’s hard to find the right word, what he was like, he just didn’t care. Yeah.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, yeah, yet he did. That’s the hard, that seems like the challenge. okay, yeah, yeah.
Cameron
Yeah, but it can be done. Yeah, I can absolutely be done. And that’s my challenge to you and your listeners, even just for three rounds, like go and have three fun rounds. Less is more. Yeah, go on, go and do it.
Josh Nichols
Okay, before I let you go, just one kind of final question to address the typical listener. So to the guy or girl who is going to a swing instructor and films their swing, thinking about their swing all the time, and rating how good they play or how good they are as a golfer based on how good their swing is, what should that player do starting right now?
Cameron
I’d like golfers to think and make the jump.
the learning that golf is not your golf swing or golf swing is not your golf game. So your golf swing is just a vehicle to allow you to play golf. It’s not your whole golf game. So that’s the first thing. that would, cause I don’t think it’s that important. mean, it’s important, but it’s not like everything because you can have a really good golf swing and you see it all the time in pro events, guys who have really good golf swing, but Ryder Cup’s a good example where the pressure goes up to another level for those guys and they fall apart.
The golf swing hasn’t really changed, but so there’s something more than just your golf swing. So golf is more than your golf swing. If you’re gonna work on your golf swing, do it away from the golf course, and at the very least, do it behind the ball. So imagine a line two or three metres behind the ball, or yards, and do all your thinking and analysing there, and then once you cross that line, you are playing golf, you’re executing.
and you can’t think about your swing and your technique once you’ve crossed that line. you’ve got thinking time, I like to call it Einstein-y, and then you’re executing your playing golf. But the playing golf happens a lot earlier than you think. It’s not when you get over the ball, it’s the walk to the ball, you’re basically playing golf.
And that’s why that walk to the ball is so important. Because if you’re going to start thinking about your swing as you’re walking to the ball, or you’re worried about the shot or whatever else, that’s not playing golf. You’re off at Disneyland doing something else. So you’ve got to be disciplined to leave that swing alone. But your swing, yeah, it’s not the whole game. It’s part of the game. But yeah, it’s not everything.
Josh Nichols
Hmm.
Josh Nichols
Okay, Cameron, Un-F*** Your Golf Brain is the book. You’ve also got another book.
Cameron
Yeah I have, is the brain one. This has been my pretty popular unf***ing golf swing.
Josh Nichols
Yep. Yep.
Josh Nichols
Yes.
Cameron
So way back in the day, and I can give you some, you can put some links, mate, if you listeners want to get hold of, we’ll, I haven’t got a link ready for you, but we’ll, you’ll put one in post-production, I’m assuming. Yeah, but so way back in the day when I was quite technical in trying to figure golf out, I got involved in a biomechanical study of the swing, and I worked with some of the smartest sports scientists on the planet. These guys were amazing. We did the full 3D analysis of the swing, all, you’re wired up, but the
Josh Nichols
Yes, I will.
Josh Nichols
Yes. Yes.
Cameron
The guys were incredible. were the best golf coaches I ever had. At one point after months and months of learning about the mechanics of the swing, one of the guys pulled me aside and said, mate, you don’t need any more information. You’ve got to learn to coach this without being technical. He said the human brain can’t take it all in. You got to simplify it. So golf doesn’t need more information. We know everything about the swing already. You got to get better at coaching it. And that was his challenge to me. That was over 20 years ago. And these guys were phenomenal. Because I had all this information.
months and months I was doing my head in, was overthinking it, worried about grips and stances, but those guys were brilliant. They got me out of thinking like that and got me playing golf and basically became a better coach. That was their challenge. Stop buddy bombarding people with data and analysis, it doesn’t help. So even though they were really, really smart guys and they were in the sports science world and data and numbers and mathematics was all their thing, they knew better than any golf coach I had had at that point.
Josh Nichols
Hmm.
Cameron
hey you can’t just keep ramming us down people’s stripes. So that’s why I write the golf swing book.
Josh Nichols
Yeah.
Okay, unf*** your golf brain, unf*** your golf swing, awesome stuff. Alright Cameron, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much,
Cameron
Thanks Josh. No, that was good mate, I enjoyed it.
