Stop Chasing Birdies (How Philly Won by 4)

GCL Ep04 Full Episode (cold open + welcome): Well, my dad or my dad says that I'm a I'm a pretty good putter, so I think I could I don't say that. I don't say you're a pretty good putter. What do you mean? What do I say? I don't say you're a pretty good putter. I I I don't know what you say then. I say you're the best putter I've ever seen. Joining us today as always is my guy Philly Philip Herrera Gall. Philly, what's going on? What's up? just finished the Mountain Falls tournament out in Perump. got that done yesterday. yeah, that's that's we're gonna talk about that. Yeah. Porter, what's going on? What's up? How's it going? Good. Couple of videos kicked out. One went super viral. We're gonna talk about GCL's going strong. Yeah. Content game is is kicking up. So all right, boys, let's let's start with the the most pressing Herrera family golf news. Phillip had a tournament out at Mountain Falls. It's the Nye County Amateur. he won it last year. Philly, it's gonna be a little humbling for you, but talk a little bit about Saturday and maybe maybe something that could help some junior golfers, where your mind was at and how did Saturday go? So I feel like on Saturday I didn't play my best. shot seventy-six. which is wild for you. I mean, that's your highest tournament score in like years. A long time. Yeah. so I feel like on the front nine, I really wasn't trusting my draw for my driver mostly. and then got that figured out mostly on the back nine. So and then on the back nine, I just feel like Throughout the whole entire tournament I learned that I just had to trust my draw, commit to the draw and stick to it because if I didn't then I feel like I would either push it or pull it and it wouldn't be it wouldn't be great. so I think just committing to the Well and this has been a long term discussion with us, right? Like Yeah, I I think so much good came out of Saturday because Saturday was so bad. And like, I mean that's life, but golf too, it's like like When bad things happen, they only stay bad for so long if you're committed to turning them into something good. And I think we did a pretty good job with that. So Saturday, we just kind of rolled the ball out there, saw what happened. You shot your worst tournament score. You were three shots off the lead, a place you've been in a bunch. Like to be honest, there's been a lot of times where, you know, looking back at the Nota Beget, you were three shots off the lead there. Yeah. junior world qualifier in twenty twenty five. You were three shots off the lead. So it's like I think you do very well in the chase mentality. Yeah. But you said something driving home from that tournament at Mountain Falls that was vulnerable. It was it was good to identify it, but then you you had a choice to make. Do you remember what you said about your desire to play the next day? I know I said I didn't want to play, but I said I don't want to play, but I know I have to. and I think that really is good because it makes you think about not quitting even when things get hard. Like you said, as a father, as a as a person who works every day, there's days and times where you feel like you want to quit. And I think playing the next day really really stuck out to me and made me honestly become like just more mentally better. Yeah. And we talked about it, Porter, like as we were driving home. I said, Philly, do you want to play tomorrow? And he was like going through all the mental gymnastics. And he was like, Well, the bottom line was no, he didn't want to play. Yeah. He's like, today was so bad. It felt so bad. He did not want to play. And so I I said, I get it. You have a choice to make. There's a fork in the road. You can either not play tomorrow and Start a process of quitting whenever things get hard. Or you can say, I acknowledge I don't want to play tomorrow. I don't want to play tomorrow, but like you said, I I am playing. I I know I have to. And so that's the downside. Let's talk about the upside, Philly. Coming home, we talked about three basic things. And I think one of the things that that came about was I need to take more ownership of Philly's golf strategy. we've danced around it. He he's got different golf coaches. I'm not the best golf swing mechanics guy, but I do understand golf strategy somewhat decently. And so it was like, all right, I'm in charge of golf strategy. So we came up with three rules going into Sunday that were just like his rules to live by heading into Sunday. Because we had to make up three strokes. So Philly, what were those three rules we came up with? so the first thing was commit to the draw. I already said that, but I think I was really trusting my driver first day and the whole day on the second day. I think that really helped my score. And then the second thing let's talk about that for a second, because like what he's talking about, Porter, and you've seen it. He's got like a three degree in to out golf swing. Yeah. Which is perfect, perfect to put draw spin on the ball, but he from time to time will leave his face three degrees open. So that just if you're aiming down the right side and you're swinging into out and your face is open, you just push the ball outright. Yeah. And so he's he's tried to control the draw, which we all have to control like our tendencies, but the way he's tried to control it is from time to time he leaves his face open because he's afraid of hooking it. And so committing to that draw means he might hook it every once in a while. But if you aim correctly, the hook's not going to kill you. And like so, so then we so rule number one was I'm gonna trust the draw, I'm gonna aim for it, I'm gonna commit to it. Rule number two. rule two, it was or quadrant, sorry. Mountain Falls is very quadrantated. Is is that a word? Media quadrant based, yeah. The greens have com the green complexes at Mountain Falls, probably similar to Black Desert Porter. There's just areas on the green. So at TPC Summerlin, you can have a hundred foot putt that doesn't have crazy change of like up and down, hardcore left and right. Like you can have kind of like a long putt that you know doesn't have a lot of complexity to it. At Mountain Falls, if you hit it in the wrong section of the green, you've got a four yard, like four foot drop with four degrees of slope. So it's like, man, you you end up in the wrong section of the green and like it's gonna be a really hard two putt. Yeah. Yeah. Which on the back nine on Saturday, you gave yourself some of those like really hard two putts. twice you were greenside on par fives and you chipped it and left it on the top of the and it was like one time you parred, one time you bogeyed, out of nowhere. But it wasn't because you weren't playing good golf. It was just you left it in a bad spot on the green. Yeah. Yeah. then the third thing was trusting your putter and giving it chances. I feel like I'm well my dad or my dad says that I'm a I'm pretty good putter, so I think I could I don't say that. I don't say you're a pretty good putter. What do you mean? What do I say? I don't say you're a pretty good putter. I I I don't know what you say then. I say you're the best putter I've ever seen. okay. Okay. And so and and Porter, I mean it. Like put Philly is the best of the golf ball. I've never played with somebody who putts better. I've never played with anyone who can putt like Philip ever. Even like I'm sitting with other parents and they're like, Holy crap, this kid, like, in all fairness, the kids we played with, they were missing four foot putts, they were missing two foot putts. They for sure were mi they would hit a 30 foot putt, but they would three putt a lot from thirty foot. Yeah. And Philip, honestly, I don't know the exact stats, but I would say you averaged between twenty-four and twenty-seven putts on the over those two days. you were putting so good. And it's not not combine both two days, but each other. He's saying each day. Each day. Each day. Yeah. And so rule number three was trust your putter. Yeah. Like, and so we kind of designed this. we designed this backwards where it was like, okay, we need to get you on the green because you're the best putter I've ever seen. In order to get you on the green, you can't just be on the green, you got to be on the right quadrant. So rule number one is let's give you a bunch of putts. Rule number two is let's aim for the correct quadrant. We're not worried about holding out from 160 yards, which he almost did on 16 yesterday. We're just like, let's get on the right quadrant. And in order to get in the right quadrant, we need to have a shot from the fairway that we can control. So let's hit our draw. And so it was like we we built it backwards. Long story short, Philly, yesterday you shot a 70, two under par. You won by four strokes, a seven-stroke swing. The entire field, it wasn't just one kid. It was like the entire field that like struggled on this golf course. Philly, day one wasn't great. Day two was awesome. So, Philly, 30,000 foot view, like long story short, what what did you learn about yourself, about your golf game going through this process of like. Saturday wasn't great. Sunday, I think we both agreed you probably had your B game and you won by four strokes. Like what did you learn about yourself? I think the three the three things that we talked about really helped me. I think that it makes me think less, makes me be able to be more confident. And more confident golf is more successful golf in my opinion. Yeah. so I think just sticking to those three things, especially leaning into notable gay nationals, I think it'll help me a lot. Yeah, we leave we leave a week from Wednesday. So like Porter Yeah, so so you know, we we talked about a couple of things. Like the easiest way to make a forty foot putt is have a ten foot putt. Hit the right part of the green. You know what I mean? And and like there are just some of the things that we're I'm not gonna be able to caddy for him until PGA national in December. So it's like we, you know, we printed out a little card with some of the guidelines on it. You know, we need to add those things in, those three things, Philly. And then it's just like just a reminder as he's going through his yardage book. we did some work on Saturday night with with clock drill on with his wedges. So he just knows, all right, I've got to I've got a 95 yard approach shot. That's shoulder height 54. Like he doesn't even have to think like what like which one am I gonna use? He it's it's just it's just automatically done for him. So, anyways, super proud of you, Philly. I you know, I think he he learned a lot about himself. I think he, you know, came to the bottom line is There's not he's only fourteen, but he's already such an elite physical golfer. All of his advantage is going to have to come from mental. the mental side. Yeah. So all right. Let's let's move on. Porter, let's talk about the internet invitational. Let me pull up my screen here. this is Sixty-four guys now? What was it before? forty-eight guys or something? I for well, people. There's a bunch of female golfers in it as well. Well, yeah, yeah. Forty forty two. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. So it's back this year. Philly and I watched it last year. I don't know that you paid that much attention to it. Not I thought it was really interesting. I didn't watch it when it came out, but I watched it a couple months later. Yeah. I don't know. Philly, who are you who are you looking at on this list or Porter? Who are you guys looking at that you think? They i the the way they did it last year, I'm not sure they're gonna do it the same as three three person teams. But I think it's like the three person teams is a finale. I think at first what they did was they divide the field in half, play a bunch of two two person matches, two ball matches, like two two v two. And then after the first day, half of the field is gone. And then from there it divides again, from there it divides again, and then they ended up with three teams of three. On the final day going for a million dollars. This time the three teams of three are going for four million dollars. So the winning team is gonna get one point three million dollars. Nuts. it's crazy. Two two when I saw saw Francis Francis Ellis, I thought that was a woman. I I don't know why. Tyler Tony, dude perfectly they got Johnny Manzel, Justin Gagey. It's gonna be It's gonna be fun to watch. John Gruden again, which will be dope. Yeah. John Gruden's awesome. Andrew Santino. The Jet. Yeah, Bobby Fairway. I'd like to see Bobby Fairway stick around a little while longer. Yeah, la last last time he didn't stick around too long. We had the opportunity to talk. Francis Ellis, yeah. we had the opportunity to talk to Melosi about the internet invitational last time. Obviously, Rangefinder Gate was an issue. He he I think put a piece of tape on his rangefinder so that like it can't move it. The slope was obviously off, yeah, and no one could accuse him. So here's the thing though, I mean, it's not even the we still don't know whether or not he had his slope on. The issue is you have to avoid the appearance of it. Dude, last week Philly and I were playing in our Friday game, and I won't say any names, but like there were we were playing as a fivesome and one guy hit. his tee shot and while the other four of us were still teeing off, he drove down the fairway or down drowned the side to get to his ball. We get up there and we're hey bro, what are you doing? And he's like, I was on a route, so I had to move it. It was like, okay, man, there's a million things going on here. So again, whether or not Melosi even did it, it's just the appearance of potentially doing it that caused the issue. Also Brad Doki being a plus seven cold crazy. That That mate Mason Nut is a plus six point six. I don't know if I could that's crazy. Yeah. Then Cold Cold plus seven Lance plus seven Peter Finch plus four Micah Morris plus five point three Luke Quan Matt Boots plus Matt Bootcher. Matt Bootcher's Yeah, I mean if I don't know personally if I had to there's some competition out there this year. Yeah, if I had to take Micah Morris versus Luke Juan and and Lu and Mike has to give Luke a stroke and a half. I'm taking Luke all day. Yeah. I don't think, but anyways. FP's a plus point four, Philly. You think you could take him? I I think I think I could. I think I could, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Could you take Grant Horvat? You guys are about the same. Golden Boy? Where is he? The Golden Boy's a plus three seven. Yeah, I think I think that'd be a good match, actually. I would love to see that. Yeah, who are you guys excited to see from an entertainment standpoint? who do you enjoy watching play? I think Mike sorry, Tyler Tony, dude perfect. He's gonna be good. Yeah. I think he's gonna be that'll fun to watch. I think it's gonna be interesting to see Justin Gagey out on the golf course. I didn't even know that that's Johnny Johnny Manzel. What remember last it was a crazy remember last year when Chaz teed off? And I can't remember if it was Wesley Brain or who said it. that was a good little drive. that was Andrew Sentinel. That was a good little drive. Andrew Santina. I think you might have said he's got a good little swing. That was wild. That was wild. dude, him and Wesley, they almost look like they could be brothers. When they were playing last year and playing together, I was like, huh. Yeah. Match. I'd love to see Georgie Juice give it a run. Yeah. What about the female golfers? I don't know a ton about them. Obviously, Paige Speranic is everywhere. Sarah Winters was there. Is is Grant Horvat's girlfri or Garrett Clark's girlfriend in this? Is that is that Sabrina Andolfo? Is that Grant's girlfriend? I have no clue. She's a golfer. I know that. Huh. Anyways, I don't have to say on the guy's side. I know you guys might know much might not know much about him, but Big John. I love Big John. Big John's my dog. I don't who that is. Where or is he? He's just he's right next to Ryan Whitney and Johnny Manzel. Big John, he's just funny, I don't know. He's probably like twenty four. Yeah, Big John's right here. One not to throw shade, but one that I'm not stoked about watching again is Driver Off Deck King or whatever it is. No, dude, I'm I'm deep king, I I've been watching the show. Never he makes a thought. Yeah, I don't care to watch him anymore. I can't even say that Russell's a girl. Yeah. I thought I thought he had like a ponytail or something. I don't even know. Salim, he's down. He's next to Francis Ellis. Salim will be interesting. I don't know that I've watched him. He's a part of the Nelk Boys, just big party YouTube channel. I watched his swing. Bob Does Sports posted like a video of his swing when they just did their like prize picks little get together off at the Bob Does Sports HQ. Showed his swing super slow take back. Like yeah. Like Colin Marikawa. And then he comes through. slower than Collins. Yeah. It's a slow take back. That'll be fun to watch. I know this will be a fun internet invitational. 64 people. I know it does still come down to that three-man team at the end, but for four million dollars this year. So that'll be wild. I hope some of the Bob does guys stay in their long group. I know. I think they were all out after day two. That wasn't great. Yeah. I'd like to see him stay out a little bit longer. Do you think Bobby's gonna pull out his paws? I don't know. The his his golf is not in a good spot, to be honest. Not doing great. No, it's his he's not doing great. all right, Porter, walk us through. Let me, I'm gonna pull it up, but walk us through kind of GCL golf social. What's working, what's not working, like what are you learning as far as you know, like the You the social side of GCL, what's popping, what's not. What you think? I mean, it's all nobody really fully understands the social game, but it's been fun. It's been a fun experiment. We had a video pop off this week. It was like 75,000 views. Dude, the share rate was crazy. It was like five percent of viewers of the video shared it to their friends and stuff like that. This one right here. Yeah, it was the little You love that? See if I can get to the sound again. You love that? Yeah, I don't know if it's playing, but just that little fishing kit. When I piped the ball down the green in the scramble, got a lot of views, a lot of shares, a lot of re-shares. It was dope. so gonna start putting out a little bit more content like that. this one this one here is pretty good. Gonna start doing some more on the course actual content itself. Expect some things of Philly like putting drills or what he does on the Yeah, you did this victory hold with me. I thought this was pretty good. Yeah. was this Augusta Ranch? Yeah, this is that Augusta Ranch or home course. It's like a par 62. That was just me. Yeah. you need to get a shot tracer going. Yeah. Yeah, I got to get a shot tracer It's hard for me to watch golf shots that don't have a shot. Like if that had a shot tracer on it, it's so much more engaging. mom watched it. Dude, mom is so. D1 golf girl now that she's like, you need to see this last chip Porter hit. This one right here. she she was like, that was such a good chip. It's like, how does she know? I am not even kidding you. Me saying there was a little subsection where I said like Stimp was probably playing a six, might have been slower. Like it was impossible to hit it hard enough. It looks like you're putting on a fairway. Dude, it was it was bad. They overseed it and they just I don't know. Well, this is what I'm looking so forward to you guys moving here is just so we can just create content like this all day. Now, the real star of the show, for anyone who missed it, Jenny H stepped up. This did not hit a whole one. Yeah. Two in a row. Two in a row. We were doing this whole in one challenge on TikTok. Hit this shot crazy, hit it to like three feet, and then backed it up with another one right after. And on Pebble Beach Hole Seven. On Pebble Beach Hole Seven. That was crazy. Yeah, this is the second one. I like back. I want her to I want her to come up to TPC and us just play like nine holes every day. It'd be so fun. Yeah. No, she's she's good. So we did some what's in the bag stuff. people are nicer on Instagram, dude. People are ruthless on TikTok. Like I said when I was doing my title as QI forty. Yeah. Instead Taylor made QI40. Someone tell Bro Taylor made makes QI40. I was you take yourself way too serious. Yeah, we did this father-son golf one. So, anyways, we're getting some decent traction on Instagram. It's not yet flowing into follows. but you know, we just need to keep putting out more and more content. two swings of mom was hooked. We must have just dropped this one. Yeah. yeah. So We're in the process of of developing our our logo. We're working on some some swag. clean is a brand. Like if anyone hasn't followed clean, or not clean, what we said, sweet. We're we're clean. Yeah. Sweet is a good example of kind of what we're looking to let's see, sweet take inspiration from. Is it sweet hatco? There we go. Yeah. Like this brand, like is super good with with the swag that they developed. yeah, they're not golf, but it's just clean, good colors, very simplistic. I was gonna wear a sweet hoodie today, but so Clayton Golf, if you're hearing this, not copying the idea, just taking some inspiration. Inspirational. Yep. Just inspiration. but but they're a good brand. another one we take a lot of inspiration from is is Malbon. They're so good. Steven Malbon developed this brand. There's they're really good. So we're we're gonna be coming out with some swag. I think I you know, we're gonna create stuff that we would wear and whether or not people follow and agree with us, you know, is up to them. But we're gonna be developing some swag here soon. Porter and I like the Richardson style hat. Philly likes more of the traditional like ping style hat. So look for that coming down the pipe. PJ Tours kind of quiet. Austin Smotherman won twice in a row. They only played three rounds in Bermuda. They ended up going to a playoff this morning. Smotherman and Seamus Power. Smotherman won. Philly, I don't know a ton about him. I think he's a former SMU guy, played with Bryson DeChambeau, played like 200 golf tournaments for PJ Tour and then just wins twice in a row, which is crazy. Yeah, I I feel like I heard something about him having a cool comeback story or something. And then he placed top five in I think a big tournament. And then yeah, one Bank of Utah Championship at Black Desert that we went to and then won this week in that playoff. I ca I kinda am sad that Seamus Power didn't win my fellow Irishman, but And fellow pink and and and fellow pink, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was good to hear from Philly's ping rep as soon as he won that tournament yesterday. A guy hit us up and said, Hey, tell Philly congrats. So we're gonna see him out there in Louisiana. I guess to round things out, Philly, walk us through the plan for the next the next week for you, as far as national tournament prep. What are you gonna be working on? I'm just gonna really try to dial in my numbers, really try to dial in the shots that I need to hit, be more comfortable with the draw. I've already said that three times this podcast, but Really trying to dial that in. just trying to tighten up some screws and just trying to do the things that I need to work on. Be vulnerable. Yeah, there's I mean, there's not a world. I think you made six birdies yesterday. I think you made four birdies on Saturday. We don't need more birdies. And this is kind of a lesson to everybody in golf, like Scott Fawcett talks about this a lot. Like The true improvement in golf does not come from the creation of more birdies. It comes from the elimination of bogeys. Yep. And so like yesterday we had six birdies, four bogeys. If we have six birdies, one bogey, all of a sudden we shoot a sixty-seven. You know what I mean? And it's like the bogeys weren't there was one bogey that was warranted because we we aimed kind of too far center and ended up hitting a little bit of a hook draw and had to take a drop. But for the most part, the other three bo bogeys were just silly just mistake, not trusting the draw. And it's like, if we can just eliminate that, we don't have to make more birdies. Six is plenty in a round. We just have to stop making as many bogeys. And it there's almost a cool there was one par four, Philly, that you hit the ball on the green and you had like a, I'm thinking about that somewhat drivable par four on the back. It's like 14, 13. And You hit it on the green, you lipped out a birdie putt, but you have a 45 foot birdie putt. And I just said, hey, this is a par hole anyways. there's certain there's certain par fours that it's like, let's just make a par. But every par three we play, let's just make a par. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it's like you're gonna you're gonna make you're gonna play good golf by avoid avoiding bogey on par threes, avoiding bogey on par fours with the occasional birdie. And then for the most part, for somebody with Philly's length, you're trying to birdie every par five. And it's like, that's where you make your living, three or four under par every round. you can go to any college you want if you could figure that out. Yeah. But everybody out there is chasing birdies. Philly's really in this process now of like, I'm not worried about chasing birdies. I know I'm gonna make them. I'm just gonna eliminate eliminate silly bogies. Yeah. And all of a sudden, I think his scoring average right now, tournament scoring average is like, sixty nine point eight or something like that. If he can get his if he can find another stroke or two to where his his tournament scoring average is sixty eight, he's top ten in his class. You know what I mean? And then he could pick whatever college he wants to go to. So it's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. Porter, what's next for you golf wise? Not much. This is our last week. We joined a little eight week fall simulator tournament. Last week I think I might be in fourth place or something like that, which is just fire. I think there's some pretty good golfer in our thing. I think he's averaging like five under every course that we play. Yeah. Five or six under. but it's fun, it's been good. Sim golf, it's interesting. I hate putting on sim golf. It's the worst thing in the world. Yeah, because you're a heads up putter. but heads up putting's tough when you're not actually looking at a hole. Yeah, well when I play sim, I don't I don't look at the hole. Yeah. You should try it. Try heads up putting. But you gotta tell yourself, like, okay, this is a 18 foot putt, and then you look at the hole and see if your hands will do the work. Yeah. Yeah. So don't have much on my golf game. Golf got back up to be 250 around at some Muni course in Arizona. So much. Well, and you're a member of Summerlin. All you have to do is show up and you play for free. Yep. So it'll be good. We'll get you back here. all right, boys. Well, you know, this is a little bit shorter. Got to get Philly to school. Looking forward to next week. We'll be doing a full tourney prep sesh podcast. And and then the following week we'll be showing up with results from the national championship. Philly's gonna get in the in the final four groups to be on golf channel, which would be fun. to be honest, he he always raises to whatever the level of competition is. So he's you know what I mean, he's gonna put himself in a good position, but he's gonna be playing against a bunch of sixteen year olds. You know what I mean? So it's not gonna be easy. We've got the course on our sim, so he's gonna be playing it every day for the next week and a half until we leave. So focusing on those three things, even on the sim. Trusting the draw, finding the right section of the green to be in, and then try to make some putts. So it'll be fun. Yep. Mm-hmm. All right. Okay, boys. In between now and then, just go ahead and live clean, play lucky. It's all you gotta do. Yeah. All right. See you guys. See ya.