00:00So for you, being a very long player, you were touching 190 ball speeds this past week in Utah.
00:05So has that always been something that you've had as a junior golfer growing up?
00:09Have you always been able to hit it far?
00:11Or is that something you've had to work on?
00:13Or is this kind of a natural God-given gift you got?
00:17No, I didn't.
00:18I wouldn't say I was always the long guy.
00:21I was maybe average in junior golf.
00:24I wasn't a super short knocker, but I was not long.
00:27There were a lot of guys who hit the ball a lot further than I did.
00:31But my golf coach, Adam Harrell, even at a young age, I started working with him when I was 12 or 13,
00:37just encouraged me to swing the club really fast at the end of a range session or stuff like that.
00:43And I think that that had a huge impact.
00:45But probably the biggest development were my trainers I've had the last couple of years.
00:50Jason Mish is my trainer at Peak Institute.
00:53I've been with him for seven or eight years now.
00:55And so I started seeing him in high school and just helped me develop a really good understanding for the brakes in my swing,
01:05how I get power, making sure I'm able to slow everything down so I don't get hurt moving at these higher speeds.
01:13And then I went out to Wake Forest, and Coach Bass, our trainer at school, was really good.
01:17He was TPI certified.
01:19He went out to San Diego, did the Greg Rose TPI stuff.
01:23So he had a really great understanding for what's going on in the swing.
01:26And I felt like that's pretty unique for a college coach to have that level of golf expertise.
01:33Normally, you don't see a college trainer like that.
01:35And Jason, my trainer back home, who I still continue to work with,
01:39he would always say that Coach Bass is the most favorite college trainer he has ever worked with.
01:46Because normally, they just ignore him and, you know, think that it's, you know, doing the golf stuff is crazy.
01:54So I really kind of steadily got quicker as soon as I started seeing Jason somewhere around middle of high school.
02:02And then throughout college, I got faster as well.
02:04I went into college with, like, an all-out max club at speed, like 125, which is still pretty quick.
02:12That's fast.
02:13You know, that's like, that was senior year of high school, maybe.
02:15And then I left school at 135 was my max.
02:25Well, that's kind of swinging the stick pretty quick there, Michael.
02:29Yeah, so, I mean, you know, being able to pick up 10 miles an hour of, you know, top-end club head speed is,
02:36I feel like that's a lot, you know, in a four-year stretch, especially while you're at school
02:40and you've got a lot of other, you know, a lot of other things to worry about.
02:44So how did that help you in winning golf tournaments in college?
02:47You won eight times and had, obviously, an incredible career at Wake Forest.
02:51But the managing of how to win, you know, anybody can go in.
02:56And I shouldn't say anybody, but anybody with skill like yourself can put in time to try to swing it as hard as you can,
03:03but managing also accuracy and distance and then also winning golf tournaments.
03:08That's an entire formula that isn't exactly easy to put together.
03:12How were you able to do that in college to win eight times?
03:17Yeah.
03:18I didn't know what to expect going into college.
03:20I was not like an AJGA player kid growing up, you know, that's not something my family did.
03:29So I knew a lot of the names, but I maybe wasn't as close with, you know, some of the top players as they were,
03:36you know, because they played in the same junior circuit growing up and stuff like that.
03:40So I got to school and my first goal was just making the lineup.
03:44Like, I want to play in a tournament.
03:47But then I had some early success.
03:49I played well.
03:50The first, like, five events, four events of college played really well.
03:55Won twice.
03:56And I was like, I was like, wow.
04:00And my first thought was maybe similar to you, you know, winning at Shriners.
04:04I was like, man, college golf, like, this is easy.
04:07You know, like, I'm just going to dominate for the rest of my career.
04:10Like, I'm going to win six times my freshman year and turn pro.
04:14You know what I mean?
04:14So that's kind of where my head was at.
04:17And so not true.
04:19I played four great events.
04:21And then I played probably six horrendous golf tournaments to finish up my freshman year.
04:27And that was a great learning lesson for me.
04:29I just, I don't know, got way ahead of myself and, you know, didn't manage it well.
04:33And probably too many, too many expectations, but yeah, definitely kind of had like a Jekyll and Hyde freshman year in college.
04:42And I think that kind of helps just with my golf development, maybe temper the emotions and expectations a little bit after, you know, after having success, like just realizing that it can go bad pretty quickly.
04:55And, and I think that knowing that kind of helps me even now, like when things are going well, you can't take it for granted and you can't expect it to last forever.
05:05So there's, you know, there's an element of like, even when you're playing well, like let's get better, you know, and try to improve because if you don't, then, then you're going backwards.
05:15And, but yeah, I think I'm like a fairly intense competitor, you know, and I think I play some of my like better golf when I, I am not upset and pissed out on the golf course, but, but focused.
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