Golf improvement for people with a 9 to 5. We use strokes gained data and motor learning science to help you practice smarter, save time, and shoot lower scores with the clubs, schedule, and life you already have. Most golf advice is built for people with unlimited range time and a coach on speed dial. This show is built for the rest of us. The weekend warrior. The dad who gets 90 minutes on a Saturday. The mid-handicapper who has been stuck at the same score for three years. Every episode gives you one thing you can actually use. A practice drill you can do in your living room. A course management decision that saves you two shots. A data point that shuts down the bad advice you keep getting from your buddies. New episodes every Friday morning. Try the Play Ready Golf app free for 7 days at playready.golf
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Données mises à jour le 07/11/2026
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Three scored 15 minute sessions a week is enough to keep your golf game over the winter. Isaak and Hayden start with what a month off does (golfers who haven't played in 30 days beat their normal score a little over 1 time in 4), what fades first, why short scored sessions beat one long one, and why approach comes first if you can see a number. Then the exact week: an approach session on a simulator, a putting session at home and a chipping session to a towel, each with a score to beat.
Chapters
0:00 What a month off does to your first round back
Lou Stagner, Arccos data (Newsletter #18): golfers with no round in the last 30 days beat the median of their last 20 rounds 28% of the time. Golfers with 16 or more rounds that month, 57%.
Arthur and colleagues, 1998, Human Performance, 53 articles: after time off, accuracy tasks lost about 3 times as much as speed tasks. Lab tasks, and speed means how fast a task gets done, not swing speed.
Dail and Christina, 2004: 90 new golfers hit the same 240 putts, all in one day or 60 a day for 4 days. The spread out group was better 1 day, 1 week and 1 month later.
Arccos via MyGolfSpy, Jul 2026, about 329,000 rounds: approach is about 40% of the gap between one handicap level and the next.
TrackMan tour averages: 7 iron land angle 50 degrees on the PGA Tour, 47 on the LPGA Tour.
Lou Stagner, Arccos data (Newsletter #140): from 150 yards, a 15 handicap hits a good shot (90% of the distance, within 10 yards of the line) about 3 times in 10.
Play Ready Golf app data: golfers who posted 6 or more rounds this year improved about 2 shots on average.
Your handicap isn't your average. It's built from your best 8 rounds out of your last 20, so a 15 handicap who shoots 94 is having a normal day, not a crisis. Isaak and Hayden walk through what a normal round and a bad round look like from a 20 handicap to scratch, why Scottie Scheffler still had a 12 shot range last season, the 3 kinds of holes most likely to turn into a double in 453 rounds of Play Ready Golf app data, and a 10 minute review that tells you what to practice next week.
That's a hole in your bag the industry made, and most golfers never check it. So they end up with two wedges that go the same distance and one gap they guess at every round. Hayden and I break down how the bottom of your bag got broken, how to find the hole in yours in about 2 minutes, and a winter plan that gives you a number for every wedge and every swing.
This isn't a gear episode. Most of the fix is checking the lofts you already have, and the rest is one bucket of balls this winter.
Chapters
0:00 Your pitching wedge used to say 49
1:56 How much loft your pitching wedge lost
4:00 How close tour pros really hit it from 100 yards
5:21 How the bottom of your bag got broken
9:17 What tour players actually carry
9:58 Should you carry 4 wedges?
12:38 The club you carry because everyone else does
13:56 The problem with the 60 degree
17:46 Dave Pelz, Tom Kite and the first 60
19:16 Fix 1: check your gaps (4 to 6 degrees)
21:29 Fix 2: bounce and grind, made simple
25:21 Fix 3: when your grooves are worn out
27:52 Fix 4: the Wedge Matrix (Pelz's 3x4)
He Barely Practices and Still Plays to a +5 - Kris Marshall (Ep. 43)
Saison 1 · Épisode 44
mardi 20 octobre 2026 • Durée 59:06
Kris Marshall didn't touch a golf club until he was 16. He sent his resume to 500 colleges and got zero responses, walked on at Kansas anyway, and left a two-time All-American. Today he's a +5 with a full-time career, three kids, and barely any practice time.
We get into how he walked on at KU, six trips to Q School (four of them lost by a single shot), why he walked away from pro golf to start a family, and what he thinks about the reinstatement debate. Then he shares the forward tees drill that teaches you to go low, and why a 10 handicap should stop aiming at pins.
HOPEKIDS: the charity Kris founded a golf tournament for, serving families of children with life-threatening illnesses
PLAY READY GOLF APP: practice plans built from your strokes gained and the time you actually have. 30 days free, and code PRGPOD takes $20 off the year.
If you went 10 for 10 at the range last night, you didn't practice. You performed.
Adam Young, one of the best practice coaches in golf, wants his players making somewhere between 3 and 7 out of every 10. Most of us build every range session around never missing. That's why the good nights never show up on Saturday.
In this episode, Isaak and Hayden get into how much you should actually be missing, what Rory McIlroy did after blowing the 2011 Masters, and the 3 dials (distance, target size and randomness) that make any drill show up on the course.
Hayden also tells the full story of his 2024 Canadian Q School week in Dothan, Alabama. He was 7 under after two rounds. Then came a double on a 200 yard par 3, a misread tee time and a DQ before the final round. He shares what he does differently now.
Tell us in the comments: what's your next drill, and how many out of 10 do you make?
Studies and people we mention:
Adam Young, The Practice Manual
Guadagnoli and Lee (2004), the challenge point framework
Robert Bjork, desirable difficulties
Wilson et al. (2019), Nature Communications, the 85% rule
Human Movement Science (2025), when a task gets too hard
Jared Porter, LSU, moving from blocked to random practice
Why You Play Better When You Don't Care - Sam Jackson
Want a practice plan built for your game and your schedule? Try Play Ready Golf free for 7 days. Code ISAAK takes $20 off the year 👉 https://playready.golf/the-app
Sam Jackson sells windows for a living. He has a 7 month old at home and practices once or twice a week. He's also been South Carolina Golf Association Player of the Year 4 years in a row, made the semifinals of the 2023 U.S. Mid-Amateur, and won the 2025 South Carolina Amateur with a wedge to 3 inches on the final hole.
His edge isn't his swing. It's caring less. Golf used to be his #1 priority. Now it's 4th or 5th, and he plays better for it. In this episode he explains how to stop living and dying with every shot, the 3 checks he runs every time he practices, and why his best week in golf came after his worst prep.
You'll learn:
Why a 4x Player of the Year calls himself a mediocre college player
How to take the pressure off every single shot
Why he's hit it great and finished 7th, then hit it average and contended
The 3 fundamentals he checks every session
How he got into contention on 4 rounds in 4 months with a newborn
Where to start when you have an hour at the range and no plan
Roughly 800 former pros apply to regain their amateur status every year, and virtually all are approved. This week at the U.S. Mid-Amateur, 7 of the 8 quarterfinalists were reinstated amateurs, and so are both finalists.
Career amateur TJ Shuart, a veteran of 12 USGA championships, joins Isaak to ask whether a reinstated pro is ever really an amateur again. They walk through why the USGA built the Mid-Am in 1981, the news that brought this to a head, and the toughest counterarguments. Then TJ lays out a simple fix: a waiting period based on how long you played as a pro and how high you got.
Every player discussed followed the rules as written. This conversation is about the rules.
0:27 The fork in the road: pro or lifelong amateur
2:31 Why the USGA built the Mid-Am in 1981
4:30 TJ Shuart's career as an amateur
7:22 The Mid-Am 20 years ago
12:09 The numbers: 800 reinstatements a year
17:22 How we got here: Knost, the USGA pause, and Sposa
28:11 "Those guys stopped playing years ago"
34:20 Is a reinstated pro the same player?
38:21 The Stewart Hagestad question
42:21 Challenge 1: college players
You Already Have The Speed. You're Not Using It. - Mike Carroll (Ep. 40)
Saison 1 · Épisode 40
vendredi 25 septembre 2026 • Durée 01:00:38
Most golfers work on the wrong thing. They stretch when the problem is fear. They lift when the problem is transfer. They take a lesson when the problem is speed.
Mike Carroll trains PGA Tour players through Fit For Golf, and he gave four at-home checks that tell you which one is actually holding you back. Then he laid out the exact 20 minute, three days a week template for a guy with a job, kids, and no gym.
FREE: The 15 Minute Test (one page, four checks, your one thing this month)
Fairways hit is the golf stat every app shows you first, and it barely separates a scratch golfer from a 20 handicap. In this episode Isaak and Hayden go through the four golf stats on every scorecard app (fairways hit, greens in regulation, up and down percentage, putts per round), show what each one hides, and swap each one for a number you can track with a pencil that actually predicts your score.
WHAT YOU WILL HEAR
Why a scratch golfer hits only about 4% more fairways than a 20 handicap (Shot Scope)
The stat that actually separates handicaps off the tee: 12% vs 45% of drives in penalty or recovery (Arccos, 2025 driving report)
What the rough, trees, and a fairway bunker really cost you
Bryson at Winged Foot: 23 of 56 fairways and a U.S. Open trophy
Broadie's breakdown of where the scoring gap comes from: approach 40%, tee 28%, short game 17%, putting 15%
Why greens in regulation cannot tell 6 feet from 60
Why up and down percentage grades your chip on your putt
Hayden's 65 with 35 putts, and why putts per round rewards bad golf
The two putts that separate handicaps: lags from 30 feet and makes inside 8
Strokes gained vs simple stats: which one you should keep
Chapters:
0:00 Fairways hit barely separates golfers
Your Swing Looks Perfect. That's the Problem - Austin Langdale
Want a practice plan built for your game and your schedule? Try Play Ready Golf free for 7 days. Code PRGPOD takes $20 off every year: https://playready.golf/the-app
Austin Langdale's job is deciding which college golfers get equipment deals. He scouts for Srixon/Cleveland Golf, which means he watches perfect golf swings every single week. Most of those players never make it. In this episode he explains what actually separates scorers from range heroes, and how he used it to win the 2026 South Carolina Amateur while playing twice a month with 2 kids and a full time job. 9 years after an MS diagnosis ended his shot at pro golf.
You'll learn:
Why players with 190 ball speed still shoot 76
The tell scouts look for when everyone on the range looks perfect
How to win a state am on 40 minutes of practice a week
What to buy with $1,000 and 2 hours a week, and what to skip
Why most golfers carry 14 clubs but only need 8 or 9
The 1 club drill that builds feel faster than new gear
Chapters
00:00 A state champion's practice month
01:29 Closing out Quixote with the lead
03:31 Watching good golf instead of practicing
04:28 What a Srixon rep actually does
06:29 Who gets signed and who gets passed
Podcasts Similaires Basées sur le Contenu
Découvrez des podcasts liées à Play Ready Golf | Strokes Gained for the 9 to 5 Golfer. Explorez des podcasts avec des thèmes, sujets, et formats similaires. Ces similarités sont calculées grâce à des données tangibles, pas d'extrapolations !
World Handicap System (USGA and R&A): your Handicap Index is the average of your best 8 score differentials from your last 20 rounds; net double bogey is the most you post on a hole.
USGA handicap research, old system (best 10 of 20): golfers shot their course handicap or better about 25% of the time, about 3 strokes worse on average.
Lou Stagner, Arccos data: a 17 shot median gap between a golfer's best and worst round in a season (30+ rounds, steady handicap), plus the tour expectation numbers.
Shot Scope user data: fairways, greens, bogeys, doubles, three putts and penalty strokes by handicap.
PGA Tour: Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, 2025 season.
Play Ready Golf app: 453 rounds from 127 golfers, Nov 2025 to Oct 2026.
28:53 Why your 9 o'clock number matters
31:16 How to fill in your matrix this winter
33:08 When 4 wedges is the right call
34:08 How much wedges really matter
35:13 What to do tonight
36:02 What we're changing in our own bags
Two fixes from the episode, also on screen: Ping's G440 went from 5 set wedges to 4 (fewer, not more). And a 15 handicap's double rate from 200 yards is about twice what it is from 150 (29% vs 15.6%), not 3 times.
2025 lofts: Callaway Elyte and Ping G440 spec sheets; Today's Golfer on the G440 wedge change
Tour proximity from 100 yards: PGA Tour stats
Finishing 75+ feet away, and double rates by distance: Lou Stagner, Arccos data
What tour players carry: Golfing Focus, top 100 PGA Tour players
Wedge gapping (4 to 6 degrees, 10 to 15 yards): Titleist Vokey
Tom Kite and the 60 degree: Golf Channel, World Golf Hall of Fame
Groove wear: Titleist's own robot testing; MyGolfSpy
The 3x4 system: Dave Pelz, GOLF Magazine, 1990
Pitches that find the green vs miss it: Play Ready Golf app, 453 rounds from 127 golfers
Long game share of the scoring gap: Mark Broadie, Every Shot Counts
15 handicap 4 iron distance: Shot Scope
11:43 Turning pro: "You don't have to, you get to"
17:05 Six trips to Q School
19:17 Why he walked away from pro golf
21:44 Reinstatement and the "true amateur" argument
24:13 Kris's fix for reinstatement
27:50 What makes a great mid-am event
35:29 How golf built his career
37:52 The 14 handicap who was nervous to play with a +5
41:48 How to go low: play the forward tees
43:37 Late to the tee, then four eagles at the Kansas Open
45:44 Set a scoring goal and don't move it
46:22 Chess, not checkers, off the tee
47:44 Data vs feel
51:28 What a 10 handicap should fix this week
53:12 22-year-old Kris vs 46-year-old Kris
56:50 HopeKids
Low and colleagues, 14 studies on pressure training
Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets
Sisk et al. (2018), the growth mindset meta-analysis
Chapters:
0:00 Why 10 for 10 at the range is a bad sign
1:59 How much should you be missing?
3:08 Adam Young's 3 to 7 out of 10 rule
4:00 The 3 dials that change any drill
4:31 There's no such thing as a good drill
5:26 Why easy practice feels so good
6:46 The 85% rule for faster learning
7:34 When hard practice backfires
7:49 Signs your practice is too easy
10:26 What Rory did after the 2011 Masters
10:48 Rory's 496 for 496 inside 3 feet
14:54 Hayden's Q School blowup
17:23 The tee time mistake
19:42 How Hayden bounced back
22:04 Handling emotions after a miss
24:20 The 3 part plan
24:29 Part A: turn one dial
26:57 Add a consequence: Colby's match
28:56 Part B: stop judging by results
30:41 The 3 buckets for every miss
31:37 Part C: is growth mindset enough?
32:37 Playing to your personality
35:50 Ask: how many did I actually miss?
36:31 Isaak's GC3 ladder drill
37:37 Hayden's takeaway
40:15 New Friday schedule
New schedule: episodes with just Isaak and Hayden now drop every Friday. Guest episodes are bonus episodes early in the week.
Isaak is a competitive mid-am who helps busy golfers improve with the time they already have. Hayden is a professional golfer. Play Ready Golf helps you practice with purpose, so you show up to the first tee ready to score.
0:00 Not that Samuel Jackson
1:08 Starting golf at 12
2:30 What sped up his development
4:23 The U.S. Junior at 15
5:09 A 74.8 college scoring average
6:53 Treating every shot like the one
7:58 How to stop living and dying on every shot
8:22 The mental game beats the physical by a mile
9:01 Golf went from #1 to #5
10:35 Make golf as meaningless as possible
10:56 Less pressure at a D2 school
11:33 Staying sharp with a newborn
13:12 The 17 Golfers cheat sheet
13:41 4 rounds in 4 months, then the final group
15:07 How he picks what to practice
16:11 Where to start with an hour and no plan
17:44 The Play Ready Golf app
18:19 His 3 checks: grip, ball position, alignment
