Vance Crowe Podcast 013: Jay Delsing PGA Tour player on how to go pro, expensive clubs & meditation.

Jay Delsing [00:00:00] And it's because the, the teaching is, since we're not on tv, the teaching just horse shit, it's terrible. People do not know how to teach this game. They do not. The the guys giving lessons in general do not know how to teach it, and they're not helping people. And consequently, people are quitting because they're frustrated. This is the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:26] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Each week on this show, I sit across the table from an expert and I try and get them to open up about the discipline it took to gain the expertise, knowledge, and skill that they have. And this week I sat across the table from a professional golfer named Jay Delsing. Jay is a fascinating guy. And before we sat down, I really had no idea just how difficult it is to become a professional golfer. What you have to go through and what it's like to be somebody that's in such a solo sport. As we go through this interview, you will hear about the inner workings of golf for a little while, but eventually we get to this point where we talk about how does one deal with the extraordinary pressure of having thousands of people watch you while you try and remain calm and hit a shot? And he, Jay, has a great way of making golf relatable to people that, like me, aren't that interested in the sport. But by the time we get done, Jay and I talk about things like breathing exercises and meditation and the feeling and the experience of standing in front of a group of people and being able to perform at your very best. Jay was a heck of a lot of fun and to talk to, and you can tell right away that he is an expert at the radio. He's a commentator on Fox Sports and he even has his own show on ESPN here in St. Louis called Golf with Jay Delsing. I hope you enjoy this episode and buckle in 'cause it's an interesting one. Jay Delsing, welcome to the podcast.

Jay Delsing [00:01:58] Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate being here.

Vance Crowe [00:02:01] So I have to say that I've had 12 people in all different sorts of domains. Everything from dairy farmers to pharmacists, and I've never had somebody on that. I knew as little about their field as I know about golf. And I, I gotta tell you, I don't know any I, I had a pharmacist on, I didn't know anything about that. That's how little I know about golf. So I am, I'm very interested to see how you can explain golf to me as though it, it makes any sense at all.

Jay Delsing [00:02:27] Well, I'm not sure it makes sense in general, but you've had 12 on your 13th. I'm lucky number 13th person is to be visiting here with you. And none of 'em are as lucky as I am to, to be able to do what I do and to be able to enjoy as much as I have the profession that I have. I mean, I'm as lucky as they get.

Vance Crowe [00:02:49] So, I mean, I think everyone knows kind of what golf is or has an image of it, but as a professional golfer, if you're gonna describe to somebody that's never heard of the game of golf, how would you describe it to them?

Jay Delsing [00:02:59] Robin Williams has a great skit out, I don't know if you've seen it, but he describes one of it's a, a game where you are giving a set of clubs that are completely inappropriate to handle the task in front of you. You know, it's, it's, it's a strange sport where if you're a good athlete, you could pick up a tennis racket v and have a game with somebody, you know, you can chase the ball down, hit it over the net and you can generally get it. You know, golf's not like that 'cause it's, it, it's counterintuitive on a lot of levels. One of the things I'll never forget, I was a young pro just on tour, 23 years old, and Dr. JI know much older than you are, but Julius Servin was the preeminent NBA and he came from the a BA basketball player on the planet. And I met him and he was playing golf at the at and t tournament up in Pebble Beach. And that's a tournament where they have celebrities and pros mixed together. And you have this team event. It's so cool. I had a great fortune to play in that thing like 26 times. So I meet Dr. J and we go out on the range and Vance, he can't hit a ball out of this room. Now we're talking about a guy that can jump completely out of the gym, can shoot a jump shot from 30 feet and just hit nothing but net can do all of these incredible body control things in the air, all of these things, and can't hit a golf ball at all. And that was the very first time that I realized how hard golf is. So

Vance Crowe [00:04:29] You were, or are you right now are a professional golfer? You're still a

Jay Delsing [00:04:33] Student? Yeah, I still am. I'm, I'm, I'm kind of quasi retired. I'm 58. There's a champions tour on a version of the PGA tour, but I've only played you, you're qualified to play that once you turn 50. I've only played 15 events or so. I've had back surgeries, I had two surgeries on my foot last year. My body's kinda tell me, eh, this might be enough. So I miss the competitiveness of it, but my body's just not cooperating too much for me to play any longer.

Vance Crowe [00:05:00] So the interesting thing about golf relative to almost all the other professional sports is that the professional sports, you get drafted into it. So you get done with college and somebody says, you know, on the 13th pick, we're going with that guy over there with golf. It doesn't work that way. How does somebody become a professional golfer? What do you have to do to be able to be allowed to play?

Jay Delsing [00:05:19] Yeah, well basically you're an independent contractor. You know, we don't have teams. So what you're referring to is the team system. So in the NBA, the N-H-L-M-L-B, you have the draft and that's how players fill rosters. There is no roster, right? So think of it this way, do them just a simple math. If you take the NFL has 53 guys on a team. There's what, 36 teams? The NMLB Hass, 32 teams, 25 man rosters, NHL, same thing. Okay. So you got all those kinda numbers. There's 125 professional golfers on the PG tour that's

Vance Crowe [00:05:53] At any given time. Wow. That's

Jay Delsing [00:05:55] It per year.

Vance Crowe [00:05:57] Okay.

Jay Delsing [00:05:57] So our numbers are super small, super, super small. And what happens is, what it looks like now, Vance, is the college programs are highly developed now. Tiger Woods has turned the golf world upside down. So these guys can be farmers and our friends listening can be nuclear physicists, but I guarantee you they've heard of Tiger Woods. Oh

Vance Crowe [00:06:19] Yeah. I mean, of course one of the biggest athletes of all time. Yeah.

Jay Delsing [00:06:21] Right. So Jack Nicholas and Arnold Palmer and these, these icons of the game put the game on the map, so to speak. Tiger blew it up. Tiger made it cool. Tiger's really screwed up a lot of things as well. We can talk about all those if you want. They're not really that interesting. And they've been batted around till a nauseum really. But the fact that tiger, in my opinion, one of the coolest things that I've experienced in my entire life, and he'll say this, that he considers himself multiracial. He considers himself African American, and his mom was Taiwanese. He considers himself multiracial. That's the coolest thing that's happened to our sport because for so long, just the color barrier in our country was, was alive. And golf is looked at as a rich kid sport. It's not true. It's looked at it 'cause the people only think of country clubs and that's the only way to play. Not true, not at all. Otherwise, I'd have never been playing, never had the opportunity to start. But Tiger brought in and opened so many doors that, that were closed for years and years. And I'm so delighted. I think it's long time coming. I think it's phenomenal. Not only in golf, in any walk, whether, you know, I'm like, I have four daughters. I'm extremely pro female. When it comes to equal pay for, whether it's athletes or executives, male or female, shouldn't matter. Your ability to do the job, shouldn't matter what color you are. Should never prohibit you from being allowed in this place or that place or, or prohibited from even anticipating in something that you want to try.

Vance Crowe [00:07:56] So you said something that, that really resonates with me, that it is a rich man sport. Yeah. And as a, as a kid that grew up, you know, working jobs over the summer and, and you know, do it, it just wasn't even in the cards. There was nobody that, that ever p you know, picked me up. Say, let's talk

Jay Delsing [00:08:11] About it. Let's talk about sort of, what kind of jobs did you have in the summer because I'll, I'll compare mine to yours. I'm a hell of a lot older than you are.

Vance Crowe [00:08:17] So I, I de tased and walked beans and baed hay and then I worked construction and worked as a busboy and then in college, worked paving. So I was That's

Jay Delsing [00:08:26] Cool.

Vance Crowe [00:08:27] Always running and gunning.

Jay Delsing [00:08:28] So I started off shoveling driveways when it snowed, you know, for like a dollar. I started cutting grass back in the day with my own little 18 inch lawnmower worth a bag on the back of it. So I had to keep the grass and dispose of it for like two bucks a yard. And I started caddying. So four hours on the golf course for seven bucks. I mean, so your jobs were probably more physically demanding, but man, I was hustling, always trying to, you know, who,

Vance Crowe [00:08:56] Who exposed you to the game of golf?

Jay Delsing [00:08:58] My dad. My dad was a professional baseball player. Played in the big leagues for 10 years. Played professionally for 20 years and he was, he would go and play golf on a Sunday at this little muni up in North County. It's a dump. It was on the Mississippi River. It flooded every year. So it was stinky. And you know, there was just all this garbage down there. And this place had a swimming pool where my, I have three older sisters, younger brothers from the fourth of five. And my sisters and my mom were sun worshipers. Right. So here, my little brother and I are just kind of dragged along and there's this golf course hooked up to this thing and my dad goes and plays there once a week or so, and I'm like, I'm not really that cool into swimming anymore. You know, I'm like 12 years old, I'd like to do something else. So I started jumping the fence and going over there and looking for golf balls and I'd take my mom's clubs and whack 'em around and just started playing and started saving my money so that I could, we didn't have a lot of money so that I could buy a membership into this place and play somewhere. And so I did that and yeah, then I went and started caddying at a local course up in North County so that I could get access to a better place. And, and then they, they hired me in the back room. So I was washing clubs and cleaning golf carts and schlepping stuff around for members. And then when I got off work, I got to play. And so I finally got to go to a course that had bunkers. The course, course I grew up on. Vince didn't ebony sand traps. It didn't have any, I mean it was like if you had to drive down the fairway, their grass was like your, the concrete in our driveways, you know, 'cause the ball would just go forever.

Jay Delsing [00:10:35] All of a sudden they go to a place that's got grass. I'm like, man, this is weird. You know? So yeah, there were some cool beginnings for me, you know? And when I hear people talk about it at a rich man's game, it's just, they're just uninformed.

Vance Crowe [00:10:50] And so, so talk about the first time you picked up clubs and swang them. Was it because you were 12? Was it easier or you had I mean, because I've played golf a few times. Yeah. But I would say that it is a humiliating experience at best. Yeah. And particularly you're playing with anybody that has any kinda skill at all.

Jay Delsing [00:11:07] We like to say now it's just a great excuse to drink and swear, you know? So you could probably relate. But when you're 12, you know, so as you get older you have all of these preconceived things in your mind that you should be able to do. You should be proficient at this. You should. That's garbage really. When you're 12, you don't have those in mind. You just wanna go, oh, maybe I can

Vance Crowe [00:11:26] Do this. Right.

Jay Delsing [00:11:27] You know? And I don't even know if it's fun. I'm gonna try this. I'm gonna see if it's fun. And, and I wasn't very good, but I was good at every, every sport I ever played. And so this was appealing to me for one reason. It was solitary. I could be by myself and I didn't need the whole neighborhood to get together and play with me. 'cause I wanted something and nobody else wanted it.

Vance Crowe [00:11:51] Oh, that's super interesting.

Jay Delsing [00:11:52] So the games, think about this. You got a great, so baseball game going on and, you know, you happen to, you know, wrangle 10 or 12 kids together and your shortstop quits.

Vance Crowe [00:12:04] Yeah. All games,

Jay Delsing [00:12:05] You know, there goes game. The game

Vance Crowe [00:12:06] Sucks. You know,

Jay Delsing [00:12:07] You're like, well wait a minute, we, okay. So we move him in here. Now there's two outfield. You know, you, you do what you can do. But that just didn't appeal to me, you know? Or somebody, you know, got hot wanted. So this was all on me, you know, I could do whatever I wanted. I could, I could just wander around this place, stay outta trouble. I had no idea what trouble was really just, I was enjoying the fact that I was trying to get good at something.

Vance Crowe [00:12:33] And so when did you start separating from, I mean, if you become a professional golfer, you, you eventually separate from the pack on like, Hey, everybody's good. But

Jay Delsing [00:12:41] Yeah, Jay

Vance Crowe [00:12:42] Is really good. When did that happen?

Jay Delsing [00:12:43] It started happening. So it took me about a year before I started getting good. And I started, well, I mean, you gotta understand though, I played a lot. Okay. Like, I, I played a lot. So having kids, I, I have four daughters. My third daughter played division one volleyball. Okay. And having parented the other girls and watching them and their dispositions and their propensities to want to stay with something compared to her were like night and day. So the, the others would be like, and the, the others were much more normal. The others would be like, let's go swing. Let's have a, let's have a popsicle, let's play catch. Can I ride my bike and can we, you know, like we go to the pool. And this one was like, can we play volleyball and can we play volleyball? Okay. And so I was like,

Vance Crowe [00:13:32] Hmm.

Jay Delsing [00:13:32] So that gave me some sort of glimpse as to what I, I, my biggest push was growing up with no money. I needed to get a scholarship to go to college 'cause my parents couldn't pay. And I knew the family was under serious financial constraints and I didn't like it.

Vance Crowe [00:13:49] Do you

Jay Delsing [00:13:49] Think most, I did not want, I did not want to be under that. I didn't want to have to go to my parents and go, Hey, can you all pay for my college?

Vance Crowe [00:14:00] So do you think most people in St. Louis know that that's your background? And the reason I ask is because, you know, as soon as I found out you and I were gonna do this interview, I'm going around telling everybody and they're like, Hey, did you know that his dad's a famous baseball player? So at least in my mind, I was thinking, well, this is why the rich kid got into baseball, or in

Jay Delsing [00:14:19] Golf. Oh dude, let me tell you a great story about my dad. So my dad grew up in a dairy farm in Wisconsin.

Vance Crowe [00:14:23] No kidding.

Jay Delsing [00:14:24] He finished high school at night. He started playing baseball in C class. So brother, they used to have CBA single, a double, a triple.

Vance Crowe [00:14:34] Oh man.

Jay Delsing [00:14:35] So this was like, you are starting on the bottom

Vance Crowe [00:14:37] Right? Not even the minors yet.

Jay Delsing [00:14:37] It's not even on the ladder yet. You, you're know, you're working your way up to the bottom rung. So my dad gets brought up by the Yankees in 1949. He's a, he's a late season call up, you know, when the rosters expand. So he comes in and he hits a couple home runs to help the Yankees overtake the Red Sox and win the pennant. It's a cool story. Okay. There's some other cool things. I won't bore you with them. But anyway, so they win the World Series in 1949. I actually have my father's, my late father's 1949 Yankee World Series ring. It's cooler than hell. The next winter, a guy named Art Richmond, who's a GM for the New York Yankees in 19, this is now 1950, says to my dad, Jim, we want you to play for the Yankees next year. And my dad says, hell art, I wanna play for the Yankees next year too. And he says, we'll pay you $5,000.

Vance Crowe [00:15:28] Wow.

Jay Delsing [00:15:28] And my dad says, is that negotiable? And he says, pretty much take it or leave it.

Vance Crowe [00:15:33] Wow.

Jay Delsing [00:15:34] $5,000. So my dad never made any money. It's not baseball. You know, you think about baseball now and it's, but it's the game. The, the, the financial status of the player has gone insanely crazy. Back then, my, my dad, all the players had jobs in the winter vans. Oh.

Vance Crowe [00:15:54] So

Jay Delsing [00:15:54] He was like a, when I, my dad was so un handy when I think of my dad was a plumber, I'm like, I need to apologize for whoever, whoever my dad's, whoever's house my dad worked on back then. 'cause my dad was a hammer and duct tape guy. That was it. So if he did plumbing, you're

Vance Crowe [00:16:08] Screwed.

Jay Delsing [00:16:09] You know, hang on to it, change it, do something. But that's kinda how it was back then.

Vance Crowe [00:16:13] My, my mentor, who is now a 99-year-old guy that lives out in New York City, but when he was coming up, he ran a department store called the Boston Store in Milwaukee. And one of the shtick that he had to get people in the store was during the summer times, they would invite the Green Bay Packers down to sell ties because none of those guys had jobs. If they weren't playing in the fall and the winter, they didn't have jobs. Can

Jay Delsing [00:16:37] You imagine?

Vance Crowe [00:16:38] I it's, it's shocking. And so

Jay Delsing [00:16:41] Can you imagine Albert OLTs like selling used cars?

Vance Crowe [00:16:44] He

Jay Delsing [00:16:44] Owns a deal. He should own the dealership with the money he's made. Yeah. So totally different. So when, when

Vance Crowe [00:16:48] You were coming up in golf, did you know that there was a career there waiting for you? Or you thought, Hey, just get college paid for and we'll see where this goes? Oh

Jay Delsing [00:16:56] Man, all I wanted to do was be a professional athlete. All I wanted to do was be a professional athlete in something. And I didn't know if I was good enough. I had a million people tell me I wasn't. And that only inspired me. I'm one of those sort of people that if you tell me, you know, you can't jump that high, I'm gonna try. That's just how I, my nature. And

Vance Crowe [00:17:14] Were you playing other sports besides golf? Yeah,

Jay Delsing [00:17:16] I played basketball. Baseball, yep.

Vance Crowe [00:17:18] Okay. Yeah,

Jay Delsing [00:17:19] I couldn't play both baseball and golf in high school. And that was probably a good thing. Although baseball's my first true love. I still love it. I'm a box score guy. I still like to keep score when I go to the ball game. I love baseball. Just a junkie. I still read about it. I still do everything about baseball. But it was probably a good thing for me because I was playing so much golf and so little baseball, we didn't have the developed programs like they do now for the kids. You know, like they have select programs and all these elite sort of programs, van. And so for me it was church league ball and it was six games a summer and one week of one day of practice. And I'm like, this sucks man. I needed something else to do. You know, caught in the backyard and bang balls off the house and things like that. And,

Vance Crowe [00:18:06] And you played golf then your high school had a team? Or how did you

Jay Delsing [00:18:09] We did. We were terrible. We were absolutely, I went to St. Louis U High, my parents loved the Jesuits. I didn't have a choice. They, my, I remember one sat, all my friends went to either Rosary or Riverview. I grew up in a little place called Glasgow Village up in North County. And I can remember my dad saying, get your clothes on Marona, take a test. I'm like, test whatcha talking about, I don't, first of all, I don't, you know, I didn't study for any tests 'cause get in the car, you know, just get in the car. So go down there and take this test and I get into the U high. And so I went to St. Louis U High, and it was a great experience. I I I, I loved it. Our, our golf team was terrible. Father Bailey was our coach who went on to be the president of JusTme High School here, another Jesuit high school and became a good friend of mine. But it was kinda like we'd all get together in a little room and go, well, if you guys wanna go have a practice, you know, go ahead. And I remember as a freshman going out my first day outta the qualifying, and I shot 76 and I was so disappointed I made that

Vance Crowe [00:19:04] I, and that doesn't mean anything to

Jay Delsing [00:19:05] Me. Suicide. Yeah. So even Par 72. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:19:07] And

Jay Delsing [00:19:07] If you're a, it's a scratch golfer, which is, so let me tell you this, 1% of everybody that plays golf can break 80.

Vance Crowe [00:19:14] Okay.

Jay Delsing [00:19:15] Okay. So I was, what was I 14 as a freshman? I should 76.

Vance Crowe [00:19:18] And you're doing this, you're in the top 1%. At, at,

Jay Delsing [00:19:21] I didn't know any of those numbers, by the way, at that age, but I mean, so I went out and I had made some bogey coming in. I shot, you know, 76. I thought, oh man, this is, this is not gonna be good. You know, I'm a freshman, I got all these upperclassmen. I was low on the team by like 10.

Vance Crowe [00:19:36] Oh yeah, that's

Jay Delsing [00:19:36] Up on our team was stinky. We actually probably had to improve to be stinky. We were worse than stinky. I don't know what, I don't wanna swear on you.

Vance Crowe [00:19:44] So, well this is, yeah,

Jay Delsing [00:19:47] No, I,

Vance Crowe [00:19:47] It's not for broadcast. Yeah. So when, when, how did you get spotted in order to be able to get a scholarship to go to, to go to college? Well,

Jay Delsing [00:19:55] So there's tournaments little, there's national tournaments that you try to qualify for. There's the United States Amateur, there's all, you know, the United States Golf Association is the governing body of the game in the world, along with their RNA, the Royal and Ancient. So the game was created in Scotland and, and England. And so the Royal and Ancient is the governing body there. And the United States Golf Association is the governing body here. And they kinda get together, they run championships all the time. The US Open, you know, always wanted to be a national open champ. Would love to be able to say, I I won the championship for my country. You know, something like that. So I played in four. Those US amateurs when I was a kid, those were mostly after one of 'em was, I, I qualified for my first one, I think when I was a junior in high school. And then I played three more of them throughout college and stuff like that. But I almost won the United States Junior Championship when I was like 16. I finished, I like, I, I don't know if I lost in the semifinals or the quarter finals, but I lost to the guy that won the tournament and we went to like extra holes and it was really close and he just nudged me out. And I, so that's how you pretty much got recognition back then. Remember no internet. It's so weird to think that there was no internet, but there was no internet, no cell phones. I sent out resumes. I sent out 250 resumes that I put together of myself to all these colleges that I wanted to go to. Any place that was like south of Memphis that I sent, I sent a packet of myself to the college coaches.

Vance Crowe [00:21:28] And so then you, you get into college and, and now you have good coaching, you have people looking.

Jay Delsing [00:21:34] No, no, we didn't really have good coaching. We had a a a a figurehead that was good. His name was Eddie Meredith Little Pro. And he was very, very good at what he did. He, he helped us raise some money. We had great awareness in la. We played great courses. I probably played on maybe the best college golf team ever with the guys that I played with that went on. Corey Paven, Steve Pate, Duffy Waldorf, Tom Bernice and I all played together. They've all gone on to have fabulous tour careers, much better than mine. One majors, things like that. We all played together in college. And you know, the college experience was awesome. I was a young guy from North County going out to la I was a huge UCLA sports fan. The year I went out there was the year that John Wooden retired. So my senior year in high school, coach Wooden retired. But Coach Wooden would come and talk to the golf team once every six weeks. We'd sit on the, sit on the floor of the, of the golf shop and Coach Wooden would sit there and talk to us in Vance. By the time we were like juniors, we're like, can you believe we gotta go listen to Coach Wooden again?

Vance Crowe [00:22:33] Can you

Jay Delsing [00:22:34] Believe I, I

Vance Crowe [00:22:34] Mean my dad has books of, of just his quotes, right?

Jay Delsing [00:22:38] Oh, I know, I know. Be quick but don't hurry. I mean, I know all those things. And so it was just a, a kind of a dream come true. I got this scholarship, everything paid for, got went out to la We had a great, I had a great college experience. It was two time all American. I graduated in four years. I got my degree. Everything was really, really cool. And then the next year I got on the PGA tour and I thought I was

Vance Crowe [00:23:01] Right outta college.

Jay Delsing [00:23:03] PGA

Vance Crowe [00:23:03] Tour. Yeah. Okay.

Jay Delsing [00:23:03] I thought I was really hot stuff and I thought I was really good until I saw all these other players that were just really good too. So it was, it was cool to, to be able to tee it up with people you watched on TV as kids like Tom Watson and Arnold Palmer. I got to play with all those guys. It was, it was like I said, so fortunate.

Vance Crowe [00:23:20] So I was doing a little bit of reading before you came over and about how you become a professional golfer and there's, you were saying, you know, 125 guys have their tour card. How, and talk a little bit about that. How do you get your tour card and then what does it mean once you have it? Yeah,

Jay Delsing [00:23:35] So back in the day there's a, the, it was a little different on how you get in now that you go through the web.com. They just, it's called a Korn Ferry tour now. They just changed the umbrella sponsorships. That's kind of the developmental tour that helps you get onto the PGA tour. Now, there was none of that back when I played. It was, you went through one qualifying school tournament and if you finished in the top, whatever it was at the time, you got a tour card that got you access to the tour the next year.

Vance Crowe [00:24:01] Okay. And

Jay Delsing [00:24:02] That's the only way. So man, you had a six round tournament at the, that was the most pressure you've ever felt in your life because you're playing for the entire next year of your life. You know, so you're coming down the stretch and going, I mean, I've never felt more nervous and crazy in my life in some of those qualifying school tournaments. But I had a really good record in the qualifying school tournament. I went through it several times, made it through it. So if you go on tour and stay in the top 1 25, you don't have to go back through the qualifying school. If you fall out of the top 1 25 and have a bad year, then you gotta go back. And if, whenever I fell out of it and I went back, I always got my card back again until I was like in my late forties. So it was, it was pretty cool. I probably played, shoot, I don't know, 25 years in a row or something like that. God, 20

Vance Crowe [00:24:49] Years in

Jay Delsing [00:24:50] A row. So something like that. It was, I played in between the web.com and the regular tour. Easily over a thousand events and just, yeah, really just really cool stuff. Got to play with the best players in the world. Worked on trying to be the best player in the world. And it never happened for me, but it was, you know, when you sit back one day, you're gonna sit on the porch and you know, you might be drooling a little on yourself. You have your buddy come over and you're, you're just gonna talk about some of the things that you're able to experience. And no, I didn't win the masters. I was never the number one player in the world or anything. But I, I went for it and I went after it and I got what I got and I'm, you know what I've liked to done better. Oh

Vance Crowe [00:25:35] Hell

Jay Delsing [00:25:36] Yeah. But if you'd have gave, gave given me a piece of paper when I was 14 and said, here's what you're gonna get. Would you take this? I'd be like, yeah. Oh, I mean, just give it to

Vance Crowe [00:25:46] Me. The millions and millions of people that would dream of playing in one round of what you've done for 25 years. Yeah. So talk a little bit about how you see the game of golf. A as far as like, you wake up in the morning and you're like, I'm gonna go play a game of golf.

Jay Delsing [00:26:02] I played this morning.

Vance Crowe [00:26:03] Okay, it's

Jay Delsing [00:26:03] 90, 95 out,

Vance Crowe [00:26:05] It's great. So this is work for you, or this is, you got a stretch and you know, you got your something. I

Jay Delsing [00:26:11] Did my, I did my lifting this morning. So I go to the gym, I do my exercises because I just want to do that. Really, it's been force of habit now just because of, so we could backtrack a little bit. Tiger changed the way the game's played, changed the way it'll be played forever. We never lifted any sort of weights before, excuse me. And he comes out and is a spindly little kid that hits the ball miles and in the first three years decides he's gonna start lifting weights. And we were always taught, if you lifted weights, you gotta screw up your swing. And before you know it, he transforms his body and turned this game into a power smash mouth game. Instead of this finesse little, most people were built like I am kind of thin, either really thin or kind of chubby and o overweight and soft. And now you look at the athletes that are playing the PGA tour and, and they're all ripped. 98% of them are ripped. They've got sports specific exercises. It's like anything Vance when you bring this sort of money and attention and the corporate sponsors into the game that Tiger did all of these fabulous other things offshoot from there. Okay. So now we have a metric system on, on how to judge things in golf. We have these phenomenal high speed computers and cameras that can capture your golf swing and break it down into nanoseconds.

Jay Delsing [00:27:44] And it wasn't until about five years ago that they really started getting developed and they, and those cameras dispelled all the things I was taught about how to play. We were taught raw incorrectly. We were the, the basic fundamentals of how to swing. Like if we wanted a ball to start further out to the right, we were taught just swing further out to the right. But no one taught us that if we swing out to the right and this is the ball and you swing out to the right, but the club face is pointing left, the ball's gonna go where the club face is pointing. Sorry, I got a little far from the microphone there, but it's just, it never dawned on anybody to think like that. It was always about the swing instead of the, you know, the ball bat sort of mentality. And all these things are happening with these computers because they can slow down the frames and you can see the contact, you can watch the contact, you can see what's actually happening instead of these cameras that are just blurred because we can swing the club so fast and they can't capture it. Well now they can capture all that stuff. Everybody on tour now travels with something called a track man. It's a little $25,000 computer that they travel with fans and they stick it out on the ground and they swing and it just spews back information how their club head speed, their ball, head speed, their launch

Vance Crowe [00:28:56] Ankles

Jay Delsing [00:28:57] Side spin. This is that. It's, it's fascinating.

Vance Crowe [00:29:00] Well then, then that actually brings up a good question, which is, you know, as soon as somebody starts to get into golf, they go to the golf store and there are golf clubs of all different price ranges. And you could go to play it again sports and buy some used clubs. Or you could go buy the, I'm sure $10,000 clubs. I, I don't even know what's

Jay Delsing [00:29:18] Out there. But yeah, that's, that's a high, there is a, a group called PXG out now that's got maybe 10 grand, but that'd be the upper range. In any case, you can

Vance Crowe [00:29:25] Go out and buy the, the Cadillac or the BM BMW clubs. Yeah. How much does that, so for a guy like you, you really know the game you've played for a long time. Yep. If you are given great clubs

Jay Delsing [00:29:36] Or

Vance Crowe [00:29:36] Well-fitting, you know, cheap clubs,

Jay Delsing [00:29:39] How many, how

Vance Crowe [00:29:39] Much is that gonna impact your game?

Jay Delsing [00:29:42] Oh man, the biggest thing's gotta be the shaft for me, because the shaft is the way the club flexes. And that's gonna help me, you know, feel where and how I'm gonna hit the ball. I could probably hit the old ones do just fine. Most people I would say can't. 'cause with the old ones, you'll have a sweet spot that's much smaller. But you know, without something like a dick, I can hit that sweet spot and most people can't, you know, and what the other, the modern day clubs have made the, the, the surfaces bigger targets, so they're off center hits and misses, you know, are corrected. And so for anybody that's starting, I would say buy the Cadillac version in a used ver slightly gently used version because it makes a huge difference. Makes it way easier. Trust me. So when you're ready to play, you're gonna call me and I'm gonna help you find the right set of clubs and,

Vance Crowe [00:30:35] And

Jay Delsing [00:30:35] Your wife too and whoever to who? Whomever

Vance Crowe [00:30:38] Else. And what about golf balls or expensive golf balls worth it?

Jay Delsing [00:30:42] I wouldn't worry about it. Right now they've, they've, they've, they've leveled the field on some of those. So I, I play the tireless ves and those are the most expensive ones. But I've been on the tireless staff my whole career, so I actually get paid to play those, which is a great deal. 'cause if I had to pay for golf balls, I might quit. 'cause I don't think that, I don't think my wallet would come outta my pocket. But for you, what,

Vance Crowe [00:31:01] What is the difference between different

Jay Delsing [00:31:03] Golf balls? It's just, it's just some feels, it's just feels a lot. So what, where it's, where it's going to, where the rubber meets the road on something like this is how much speed do you have? Okay, so speed is going, speed is power, okay. You can have a lot of speed and if you, you know, it's kinda like a fast car. If you have a real fast car, but you can't keep it on the track, it's not that good. But for someone that's starting, if you have speed, you got a really good chance to really have fun with the game because we'll get, I could get you to connect and ha and hit a ball. Like you just, you will feel absolutely nothing when you hit this ball beautifully and you watch it fly a mile and you're like, how the hell did I do that? And how the hell do I do that again? And that happened to me when I was like 13. I hit a shot and it just went right where I wanted to, right at the flagstick almost in the hole. And I was like,

Vance Crowe [00:31:49] I'm

Jay Delsing [00:31:50] Done, I'm done, man. I got this, this thing's got a hold of me. It's not letting go. I'm so fortunate that it didn't let go. So, you know, you

Vance Crowe [00:31:58] Were talking about how golf is a solitary game. You know, you went out there and, and you got to play it by yourself. And you can play it with groups though, in fact you take people around on Yeah. Tours and, and we were talking about this before about how this is actually a great way to get to know people is by playing golf with them.

Jay Delsing [00:32:16] So whenever I pray for anything, I don't, I I I I'll miss anything subtle. I need to be run over with it smacked upside the head so I can pay attention to it. And when I saw the, the pro, the ProAm formats, so professionals and amateurs get together every week on tour and the, and probably somewhere around 50 to 60 of the pros that are in a typical 150 manfield get paired with some amateurs and they go out and play. So theoretically you can go play with Tiger Woods the day before he is gonna compete in a championship on the PGA tour. First of all, that's a differentiator from our sports and any others. Yeah. You don't get to coolest shoot hoops with Michael Jordan. Yeah, Michael, if we go have a little one-on-one, you know, he is like, yeah, why would I do that?

Vance Crowe [00:32:58] Right.

Jay Delsing [00:32:59] You know, but that, that's what's so cool about it. So they don't necessarily play the same set of tees we play, so they're not back as far. But it doesn't matter, you're still putting into the same hole. But the, the, the cool thing is, is if you look at the, first of all, look at the golf demographic, it rocks. And if you look at our corporate sponsors on the PGA tour, it's basically the who's who of so many different spaces in this country and in different markets. It's, you know, ridiculous. FedEx is a, has a FedEx Cup point standing a year long point cup standing race for the PGA tour players. The top guy gets 15 million bucks. Okay, tiger Woods effect, right? Back in the day we didn't even have anything like that. And our purses were so small, it, it was, it was crazy. Then you also have like Coca-Cola, you have all the car companies, Mercedes-Benz, you have Rolex, you have Omega watches, you have great watch companies. You have just, just name them the car companies, the, the financial institutions. You'll, you, you've got them all because the, the first of all, the, the golfer for the most part is the ideal sort of athlete. They're a little more educated. They usually handle themselves better and they don't get themselves, you're not seeing a whole hell of a lot of golfers on the police reports, you know, that are coming down the, you know, the, the pike on ESPN. And I know that sounds crazy, but I mean that's, that's also it's

Vance Crowe [00:34:33] Safe money for corporations.

Jay Delsing [00:34:34] It's also too true. And you also then think of advances the guys who play golf, you know, have some expendable income. So if you're gonna try to sell your product, you know it's probably gonna fit over here. There you go. Have the opportunity to purchase that. And so the demographics are beautiful. And what I love about the game is it's introduced me to phenomenal people. My business, I started my business in 92 where I started, I started annihilating business cards. When I was a, when I was 23, I had my, had my own business card made. I had my own really well done. I spent way more money than I ever thought I'd ever spend on paper, you know, stationary and note cards so that I could write these handwritten notes to people that I played with so that I could start developing this network and this friendships, it was basically friendships. And so I'd write these guys and put my business card in there, they'd send theirs back through the mail. We didn't have the internet yet. And we, they started asking me to do things for 'em. Hey, my company's got this, will you do that? Hey, can you come in here and what can we do that'll be fun.

Vance Crowe [00:35:38] Maybe we

Jay Delsing [00:35:39] Can raise some money for this charity. This, and this is another component that just rocks about the tour is charity. We'll get to that later. But the, the fact that the, I made these friendships through the game. They're lifelong friendships. And look, I shoot what I shoot, they could shoot 150. I don't care. It's never a thing. It's never about the quality of the golf that's played. It's the quality of the person that's playing. And I've said that my entire life. I go, look, if you're not a jerk, I'll hang out here with 'em. You can shoot 200. I don't care.

Vance Crowe [00:36:15] I have a, I have a good friend and a mentor named Forrest Levenfeld. I don't know if you've ever met him, but he's a banker and he told me one of the best parts about his not so great golf game is that he gets to go out golfing with CEOs that are also not very good and they don't feel embarrassed around him. And I was like, Forrest, that's pretty clever, right? Well it's, it, it's,

Jay Delsing [00:36:35] Look, it's a humbling game and it's a hard game and you learn a lot about people in playing just nine holes with them.

Vance Crowe [00:36:42] What would you say you learn from people?

Jay Delsing [00:36:44] Oh, you learn how they handle adversity. You learn how they handle what would be looked at as in, not to me, but what they look like might be embarrassing. You look at how they play by the rules or don't play by the rules. You look at how you look at a lot of different things. You also look at how they interact. Do they talk down to you because they're the CEO? Do they, you know, you learn a lot about that.

Vance Crowe [00:37:06] What would you say, how much has cell phones changed golf from when there were no cell phones? I

Jay Delsing [00:37:15] Think it's changed life really. I think it's Oh, for sure. And, and not for the better. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:37:20] We

Jay Delsing [00:37:20] Are not better. Let me put put it that way. In terms of communication, we are not better communicators, okay? We just have more venues. We have more opportunities to communicate. It's given people platforms to be assholes and take no responsibility. Like I can say whatever I want to you via Twitter, but not look you in the eye like I'm looking you in the eye right now. Right. And it's given anybody a platform, which I guess in general you'd say, well what's wrong with that? Well, it's brought out an entire vile, nasty side of humanity that was probably always there. But now it's just continually rubbed in our face. Look at our president. I mean, I feel like, I

Vance Crowe [00:38:01] Feel like one of the things we, we were, when we, when we

Jay Delsing [00:38:04] First started thinking

Vance Crowe [00:38:05] About how great the internet would be, and this is definitely not my idea. I heard it on a, on a podcast on of the long now. And essentially the guy was saying, we all thought that by connecting everybody, all these great things would happen. And a lot of great things did happen. Yes. But we also had no idea of what happens when you connect immediate, instantaneous grotesque thoughts or anger or, and, and, and so the no one predicted this. And now kind of in hindsight, it's a little bit like, well of course people are gonna be, you know, shady to each other and, and do all these weird things. But it was definitely not, I mean, when we were learning about what the internet was gonna do, no, no one talked about this.

Jay Delsing [00:38:41] Well it's kinda, that's, it's kinda the other side of human nature, isn't it? You know, we all have those, you

Vance Crowe [00:38:46] Know, we

Jay Delsing [00:38:47] All need to be disciplined. We all need to, you know, mind our manners so to speak. But this thing, you can be sitting in your lounge chair, you know, drinking beer and see something on TV and not like it and yell something at that person.

Vance Crowe [00:39:06] Really?

Jay Delsing [00:39:07] What?

Vance Crowe [00:39:08] I mean,

Jay Delsing [00:39:08] Does that make us better? I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think it does.

Vance Crowe [00:39:12] Do you think social media has changed the game of golf?

Jay Delsing [00:39:15] Oh, it definitely has. It's made, it's made the players more popular. It's brought different components in there. It's made them more money. All the things that

Vance Crowe [00:39:22] There's,

Jay Delsing [00:39:23] There's a lot of, I'm not a social media lover. I would rather do without it. You know, I have a golf show on the radio, so I've hired a social media company and they've done a great job, but I don't wanna spend my time doing stuff like that. Like, I don't want to tell. I would much rather you and I go hang out and have a couple beers and be anonymous than me. Take a picture of the beer and now I'm gonna drink this beer and now I'm gonna go, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:39:45] Who cares? Why would someone be that interested

Jay Delsing [00:39:48] In what I'm going to do? And I, why would I want to tell them? I'd much rather fly under the radar than be in the eye as much as some others.

Vance Crowe [00:39:58] So I remember in baseball when people started taking steroids and home runs, went through the roof,

Jay Delsing [00:40:05] McGuire and Sammy. So era

Vance Crowe [00:40:06] Does, does golf have that same kind of controversial issues? If they had things like that where people played the game.

Jay Delsing [00:40:12] We have drug testing, but we've, we've only had a couple guys suspended and it was all for innocent, like tainted supplements or something like that. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:40:21] So it never took off in the same way that it did in No,

Jay Delsing [00:40:23] Because that, that's not, the guys are big, but you don't need that, that kind of bulk for golf. That's not what we're looking for. You just want to be like, Brooks Kka is the number one player in the world right now, and he's pretty big in the upper body, but he's, you need to stay flexible more than you need to stay bulk. So

Vance Crowe [00:40:42] Are you doing yoga then too? Or?

Jay Delsing [00:40:44] I've done yoga. I've done, you name it man, I've tried it. I've tried Pilates, anything to try to stay flexible and try to keep my body in there. Yeah, I've tried it all. I've, I'm pretty open to that kind of stuff.

Vance Crowe [00:40:57] Are you a superstitious guy?

Jay Delsing [00:40:58] My, I came from a family that was really superstitious and I had to get rid of those things. Like, I couldn't remember, like I can remember one time where after I made a put, I'm like, oh man, did I mark that with a heads up or a heads down quarter, you know? And I running through these mental gymnastics in my mind before the next put and I'm like, dude, just get up there and make the pot. Forget about what the coin is. So my family was crazy and still is crazy superstitious. Like, like if the cardinals were winning and they weren't watching, they wouldn't turn it on. And I'm like, that has nothing to do with anything. Nothing. And they're like, no, we're not doing it.

Vance Crowe [00:41:33] Yeah, it makes you feel, but

Jay Delsing [00:41:34] I'm like, I'm doing it.

Vance Crowe [00:41:35] It makes you feel really powerful, really important as a component of that,

Jay Delsing [00:41:39] Which is ridiculous, you know? 'cause you have no control. It makes no difference.

Vance Crowe [00:41:42] What do you think the superstition was from? Did it come from religious background or just as Oh,

Jay Delsing [00:41:46] We had a really strange, my family had a real strange sport religion kind of intertwined thinking where like, like I can remember when I was a kid, I was walking to church on Saturday morning before my soccer game because my mom had me convinced, you know, if I went to church I was gonna win. You know? And it wasn't until I started thinking like, well, doesn't God like the other team too? You know? I'm like, well, of course he does if it's, you know, so yeah, I I I had that just drilled into me when I was younger and I, I rebelled against that.

Vance Crowe [00:42:20] Like what else, what else would happen with superstition?

Jay Delsing [00:42:23] Oh man. I mean just like, do you have like carry a rosary in your pocket or carry like a, something in your golf bag or like, you know, and I'd be like, where is it? You know, is it is,

Vance Crowe [00:42:32] Do I have a cross in

Jay Delsing [00:42:33] My pocket? Did I rub it before I hit that drive? You know, all this stuff that just makes you nuts. That doesn't even matter.

Vance Crowe [00:42:39] Yeah. I remember first being exposed to prayer cards, you know, and, and thinking like, you know, making the equivalence of, of, of them to being like, baseball cards, I didn't understand. And you know, like, do people put, you know, you find out people put these in their pocket. Yeah. They carry it around and

Jay Delsing [00:42:55] We, we've trade this. I'll trade you a merry card for a Joseph card.

Vance Crowe [00:42:58] Yeah,

Jay Delsing [00:42:59] Yeah. I, man, that's just the, for me, that's the, that's the kind of bad side of religion. It's, that's a, that's a topic we could talk about for a long time. But I just feel like you've gotta get comfortable with your version of God and, and the universe and whatever that looks like for you. And, and try to, for me to try to stay away from all the dogma and all the manmade stuff that just makes it so confusing. And so if you jump through this hoop, you're gonna get this. If you give us this amount of money, you're gonna get that. I mean, that is just a, such a bad way to go. That's what I was, my whole life. Young life was just that with religion. And it was just, it's a gigantic turnoff. Like, I like the idea of someone saying they're blessed. I can't stand an athlete saying I'm blessed. It's just so overdone. You know, it's just so over it, it's just overdone for me.

Vance Crowe [00:44:02] And there must be it, particularly a game like golf where you're talking about the, you know, millimeter difference in the way you hold your shoulder. Yeah.

Jay Delsing [00:44:10] Right. The ball, having the ball bouncing across a ground van. I mean, there's so much chance involved in all of it, you know, how

Vance Crowe [00:44:16] Do you feel about playing a game where skill is a huge part of it, but chance?

Jay Delsing [00:44:22] I think that's really a, a huge part of all sport is chance, luck bounces. You know, we like to think that we've trained so hard that we're computers and that we're, we've been proven that our brains are stronger and smarter than the best computer made and all this stuff. But we're not a machine. We're human and we have, you know, we have senses and we have feelings and intuitions and things like that, and they change all the time. And then we're playing a sport that's outside in, in all the elements that are changing. Every minute you get a little gust of wind, it blows the ball. It doesn't blow the ball. You thought it would push it to the left, it pushed it to the right. You hit a, a blade of grass, it wasn't cut by the mower and the ball went a little offline and you're like, my putting sucks. Your putting really probably doesn't suck. It just, you know, there's so much chance it goes into it that it's not

Vance Crowe [00:45:16] Gonna, that happened. The

Jay Delsing [00:45:18] Biggest challenge through all that, but is to try to keep a positive outlook and try to keep and, and think that the next one's gonna be okay.

Vance Crowe [00:45:26] I, I've had a chance to, to speak at some of the best turf programs in the United States. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people don't realize that the largest agricultural product we make in the United States is grass.

Jay Delsing [00:45:38] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:45:38] And in particular, there's some really amazing programs down in, in Auburn and at, at North Carolina State University. And it was fascinating to me how much the world of even mower blades, you know, matter or breeding for, for grass. Like it's mind blowing. Well,

Jay Delsing [00:45:58] How about this, the USGA is working on, our biggest challenge for golf as we move into the future is water.

Vance Crowe [00:46:04] We

Jay Delsing [00:46:05] Gotta keep building these golf courses and how, what, what are we gonna do with the water situation? We given more and more people on the planet. It's a problem. The USGA is working and, and we've got a, the PGA tour is working on different blades of grasses that only need to be watered once a week. You know, and for whatever reason, if you go look at golf the way it was like the British Open is this week. It's great. I don't know if you watched it at all. I know you probably haven't if you're looking at me like, what? And, but it's on and it's cool.

Vance Crowe [00:46:31] If my father-in-law's watching golf, I'll watch it with him. He's probably the only person on the planet. I'll sit around and watch it.

Jay Delsing [00:46:36] I bet he, I bet he is. You gotta have to go with his house. But anyways, it comes on in the morning, comes out like six in the morning. It's on all day. Right. And you look at the golf courses over there, and they're not green like arts, it's just a different, whole different landscape because they found the land and built the course and they generally leave the land as it is, as it was. And if it's rained a lot this year, then of course might be green. If it hasn't, it's gonna look brown like a cracker. But over here we think brown's ugly. So we just dump water on it and water it and water it more and do all, you know. And, and so we've gotten some of the aesthetics that we have over here are beautiful, but it gets a little crazy. So let's talk a little bit about charity and what the PGA tour tour does for charities. Sure. Yeah. So the PGA tour is a 5 0 1 C3 has a 5 0 1 C3 arm to it, which means, you know, it's a non-for-profit. It also has a, it also has a for-profit entity. Okay. So it's a gigantic organization. Now there's well like 3000 people that work for the tour. And when, when I started there were like 40,

Vance Crowe [00:47:40] Right?

Jay Delsing [00:47:41] So it's just grown exponentially. But what's cool about it? So, so a tournament comes to town, let's take the Phoenix open, the waste management open. You may or may not be aware of this, but the 16th hole at the Phoenix Open is where they have, they've totally enclosed the entire par three and made it like a stadium. So now there's bleachers all the way around this hole that it's a football field. The hole is 152 yards long. It's longer than a football field. There are people around there that there's like 200,000 people around there.

Vance Crowe [00:48:17] Oh, wow.

Jay Delsing [00:48:18] And it is so cool. I made a hole in one there one year. Oh

Vance Crowe [00:48:22] Man. I was just gonna ask you, have you said,

Jay Delsing [00:48:25] I made a lot of hole in ones, but I, I made a hole in one there in front of all those people. And Oh man, the biggest roar I've ever had in my life, kind of a funny story goes with it. This is how cheesy the, the old PGA tour was. So all these people are yelling and screaming, it's great experience. And on the tees a car, and my, and this is on a Saturday, my catty goes, dude, I think you want a car. I'm like, he goes, can I have it? I goes, hell no. You can't have a car. What are you talking about? Just,

Vance Crowe [00:48:48] No,

Jay Delsing [00:48:49] You can't have a car. So we're walking in the car, we're, we're facing this way, and the car's like sitting on the teeth facing the way we're walking. And as we get to the front of the car, there's a little placard on it that says Sunday only.

Vance Crowe [00:49:01] Oh. Oh.

Jay Delsing [00:49:04] Nowadays, if you make a hole in one, they, they, they, you know, they give you cars and all sorts of cool things, but the, so the tournaments have changed dramatically. But this event down in Scottsdale is unbelievable on a lot of different levels. First of all, it's entertainment. People come there at the parties and the, the bands and stuff that, that show up after playing everything. Legendary. Legendary. The other thing that's cool is all the monies that are created that week and that tournament gets split 50 50, the for-profit arm of the tour takes 50% and they leave the other 50% for the local charities that are involved for the local host organization that runs that event. How much money do you think that tournament raised last year? For the local, they raised like 18 million.

Vance Crowe [00:49:57] Oh my gosh. I was thinking like two

Jay Delsing [00:49:59] 18 million

Vance Crowe [00:50:00] Bucks. Wow. Wow. Now

Jay Delsing [00:50:01] That significant money, when you multiply that by 10 years or, or 15 years, you know, you're building hospitals and you're doing, you're, you're doing some great things for, for kids and charities. So,

Vance Crowe [00:50:12] Changing the subject, but I'm, I'm interested in the discipline of golf. One of the things that I looked in your record is that you played over 5,000 games. Is that or matches professionally?

Jay Delsing [00:50:25] Oh, oh no, I, so did you look on my website?

Vance Crowe [00:50:29] I, I'm, I'm trying to, I think it was your Wikipedia page. So one

Jay Delsing [00:50:32] Of the, okay. So one of the things I did on my website was try to go, what can I put on there that's kind of interesting and unusual, which might fit into this show? And I was hanging out with my daughters and they're like, dad, how much have you walked in your life? And I'm like, whoa. 'cause we walked all through college, all through high school. So we took it just from when I turned pro and we were, we last counted, and it hasn't been updated in like, five years at 55,000 miles.

Vance Crowe [00:50:56] Wow.

Jay Delsing [00:50:57] I've walked no wonder my feet are so sore.

Vance Crowe [00:50:59] Yeah, that's, I mean, that really would have an impact on mean, how many, how many matches have you played in?

Jay Delsing [00:51:05] I have played five hundred, five hundred, five hundred and seventy or something. If, and if you combine the other PGA tour components, it's probably a thousand. Over a thousand.

Vance Crowe [00:51:14] And those are four days usually.

Jay Delsing [00:51:16] Yeah. If you make the cut, they're four days. Yep. And

Vance Crowe [00:51:19] So how in the world does somebody stay present and alert?

Jay Delsing [00:51:24] So that's

Vance Crowe [00:51:24] That many times,

Jay Delsing [00:51:25] So that's the cool thing. So most people think Vance, when you go out and play around the golf, you have to be there for the entire moment. Like, like from the time you start on the first tee to the time you're walking off the 18th, you gotta be concentrating. And it's not like that at all. It's a series of ins and outs. Here I am, I'm getting ready to hit this shot on the first tee. Okay. I, I gotta, I run through my stuff, what club am I gonna hit? What shot do I see? What can I commit to? I have to commit to it. Then I go through my pre-shot routine, and then I hit, and then comes the real challenge. Now I gotta accept what I just did, and then go find this thing and do it again, and then do it again and do it again. And go in and out and in interim, try to stay present and focused and positive because I just foul one off into the people. And now I got this horrible lie and I got, and I gotta stay positive because I've got a lot of golf left to play.

Vance Crowe [00:52:20] And what have you learned about being able to stay positive?

Jay Delsing [00:52:22] I wasn't very good at it when I was younger. I actually, I wasn't bad about staying positive. It, it's just, I, I was too emotional at that time about certain things. You know, I would, I would get too easily frazzled when I was younger and think like, even if the good stuff was happening, if it was going good, I was thinking this is, you know, gonna never end and when it was bad or this is never gonna end, you know what I mean? And it was, you're only a couple swings and a couple fields away from turning it around, you know? And also I learned in a big way that it's not that important, none of it. It's really cool. I love what I do, but it's not that important.

Vance Crowe [00:53:04] And what, what, what did become important to you?

Jay Delsing [00:53:08] Oh man. My daughters being a good dad. Being a good human being, trying to make this planet better. Trying to share the stuff that I've been gifted with, or experiences that I've been able to have to try to try to pass that along to somebody else so that they can keep it going after I'm gone. What is,

Vance Crowe [00:53:34] You know, you had such a long career in golf. What is something that you wish you would've known earlier or, or a change that you wish you would've made? Like, man, I wish I would've realized that this was a sacrifice worth making earlier.

Jay Delsing [00:53:46] Yeah, I would, it would've been what I wouldn't have done. I would not have changed my golf swing like I did. I, I just had a feeling that I couldn't hit it well enough. And I, I was, when I was good, I was extremely good. When I was bad, I was awful. What I would've done is worked on my short game. 'cause that would've lowered my scores and kept it in there and left my long game alone. That's what I would've done. I wouldn't have hurt myself as much either because I wound up hitting so many balls trying to change my swing and groove this other motion that I just kind of beat my body into the ground.

Vance Crowe [00:54:17] How, how far into your career did you do that? I

Jay Delsing [00:54:19] Did it twice.

Vance Crowe [00:54:20] Oh, wow.

Jay Delsing [00:54:21] I'm not a smart man. I did it twice.

Vance Crowe [00:54:23] I mean, that's like trying to pivot your business model or something.

Jay Delsing [00:54:26] Yeah, it's, well, well the, when you, you gotta understand, in our generation, we didn't even have videos. I mean, when I watched, when I grew up with TV on Bud, we had four channels. Okay? So one of the things that the kids have tremendous advantages over is they get to watch everything on tv and then now they can YouTube them, they can Google them, you can, you know, you can pull up and slow, you know, watch frame by frame on what, you know how Michael Jordan shoots a free throw and you can break down his leg motion, you can break down every, you can get as specific as you want. We didn't have any of that stuff. We didn't even have video for the first, you know, until like the nineties. And it was so archaic compared to what it is now. So we were just basically going by feel and what we were feeling and trying to judge what we felt by the way the ball was reacting and try to get it to work. I mean, there's this really cool thing, Ben Hogan, who was one of the giants of the game and just legendary practicer and ball striker and things like that. I can remember when video came out and the guy said to him, Mr. Hogan, do you want me to take a video of your swing and show you what it looks like? And he goes, hell no. And he goes, why not? He goes, because I don't wanna see on there that I'm not doing what I feel like I am doing. So there's a saying on tour events that what you feel ain't real, but if you feel like you're doing something and it's working, you stay with it. Okay. And that's where the, you know, the train can fall off the track because you can feel like you're doing something and it's not working.

Jay Delsing [00:55:57] You might not even be doing what you think you're doing. Do you, did you find that when you were

Vance Crowe [00:56:03] In the middle of your career, that you would, I mean, even maybe in the beginning of your career, you must be getting lots of advice.

Jay Delsing [00:56:09] Yeah, I mean, but I, I learned at an early age to disregard that. I mean, so many people told me when I was a kid, you're never gonna make it. So I was like, I don't really care what you think, but I was always interested in trying to get better. I was always interested in trying to, to get better. And I, I didn't really know how to do that. I didn't come from a family that was analytical at all. We were all feel oriented. And it was almost like, ah, just play better. Okay, how do I do that? You know, gimme some, gimme some, gimme a plan. Let me put a plan together and figure out what, you know, break this thing down and help me figure out how to do that. And it wasn't until I got older, you know, we, sports psychology came into the, to the mix. So like after my third year, I realized every damn guy on tour had a sports psychologist except me, you know? And just, so the guy just helping him try to break it down and to keep it simple and help, you know, keep your wits about you and give you some, give you some guideposts to help you along the way. And I was like, oh man, I didn't know that was going on either.

Vance Crowe [00:57:09] Did you get one?

Jay Delsing [00:57:10] Oh yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:57:10] And how'd it help?

Jay Delsing [00:57:11] Helped a lot. Bob Ella, I don't know if you've ever heard of, he's the, he's world renowned golf. He's the number one sports psychologist for sure. He is a friend of mine. He wrote two books and I got a chapter in one of his books where I kind of tried to blow his mind psychology wise, but it didn't work. So I,

Vance Crowe [00:57:26] So, so tell me what was in the, what was in the chapter?

Jay Delsing [00:57:29] It was really just about trying to trust yourself, try to keep it really, really simple. And I was having an awful year and I went down to Memphis for this tournament, and I, with, with the exception of a, I hit a golf cart and had my ball go under the tree on my 17th hole the last day, I, I probably would've won this tournament or wound up finishing second, but it was still, I still kept, you know, even as bad as my year had been at the time, I still kept believing I was gonna win and I still kept going. And it was a blast. It was really, really fun.

Vance Crowe [00:58:00] What do you think is going on in the game today that you did not expect? I mean, you've talked about the technology and the players are bigger than they used to be or more muscular, but have other things changed?

Jay Delsing [00:58:11] The biggest thing I'd never force would, would've foreseen the money getting as big as it is with Tiger. And so what's happened now, bud, is we are getting great athletes playing golf because you can look, like I said, I'm 58, I'm still involved in the game. You know what other sports could is that like, you can have an extremely long career and now you can really make money. Or maybe not as much as some of the other sports, but you know, tiger Woods is a billionaire, so there's not that many other billionaires that play the other sports. Now he's a generational or a maybe a two generational type athlete. He, people like him don't come around very often, but still his impact on the game, I guess that's the coolest thing that I got to play. And, and it was kind of the tail end of my career, but I still got to play with Tiger and play in that era and got to see that and watch it and watch the people and watch the explosion of the, of the corporate sponsorships of the golf courses change.

Vance Crowe [00:59:08] You were there before and then, and then after.

Jay Delsing [00:59:10] Yeah, right. And watch, watch the, you know, when we were playing there were metal bleachers and ropes up and things like that. Now we've got air conditioned sky boxes that are five levels tall, and we've got people coming in on helicopters to watch it. And we've got, I mean, it is just the explosion. The thing has just gone like this Vance in terms of, of finding people, finding creative ways to either entertain or watch or experience the golf tournaments either on TV or online or in person. It's just mushroomed like crazy. I never expected. So. So

Vance Crowe [00:59:45] The money has increased. Are the numbers increasing? Are more people playing golf?

Jay Delsing [00:59:49] That's a great question. Right now we're in a really strange time. We're in a flat area of progression where we're getting about 2 million people a year coming in and about 2 million a year quitting. And it's because the, the teaching is, since we're not on tv, the teaching just horse shit, it's terrible. People do not know how to teach this game. They do not, the, the guys giving lessons in general do not know how to teach it. And they're not helping people. And consequently people are quitting because they're frustrated. Okay, so

Vance Crowe [01:00:22] This is so interesting. Why? Yeah.

Jay Delsing [01:00:24] What

Vance Crowe [01:00:24] Do you mean that you, why, why

Jay Delsing [01:00:25] Is it so bad? They don't, they, they, they, they don't know what to tell these folks to get them to hit the ball better. They don't know what to tell 'em. They literally don't.

Vance Crowe [01:00:33] And so they may be themselves be good golfers, but then when it comes out to, to getting out on the course, or no, they're not even, not

Jay Delsing [01:00:40] Necessarily not, not, no, it's not, it's not like that. And, and you know, we got the golf channel on, and, and in itself it's a great thing, but it's not necessarily helping people because you can't assembly line teach this, your problem's not the same as my problem. So I can't tell you two people the same thing. You might need this, he might need the exact opposite. Your wife might need a third. You can't just go do this. And everybody's moves along happily every after. It doesn't work like that. Plus everybody's built differently. You have extremely long arms, you know, I'm not sure how much hand eye you have, but if you have hand eye coordination at your height, you can smash it. You've never even hit one. Probably good before you can smash it if you have good hand eye with your levers and how, how tall you are.

Vance Crowe [01:01:25] Oh, interesting.

Jay Delsing [01:01:25] There's a lot of speed. And think about how much speed you can create with that. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:01:28] With a big long lever. Yeah,

Jay Delsing [01:01:30] Absolutely. I mean, your wrists and, and elbows and things like that are just lovers.

Vance Crowe [01:01:34] And, and so you're saying that you think there have been a lot of people that have come in and been like, Hey, you should pay me to, to teach you how to golf, and then they don't and then it goes poorly

Jay Delsing [01:01:42] Driven. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, I've listened to instruction, I've listened to the golf channel. I've listened to some really famous people get on there and go, what? And so they make it so confusing. First of all, this is simple, gay man, it's a stick in a ball. Hit it. And until you hit it enough, like I would tell you, how am I gonna start? I want to here, here's some clubs. Go to the range and hit these balls, hit them. I'll give you a grip because I think it's important to have the, your hands on the club correctly, but start hitting because you're getting feedback when you hit. You're gonna get feelings, you're gonna get sensations. And the until you get that, you got nothing. You just have this obscure idea of how this same is played and that you're not very good. But you've gotta start making this contact and go, oh, that one felt different. What did I do differently? And then you're gonna wanna try to repeat that. And as soon as you have that in your memory bank, we have some place to start.

Vance Crowe [01:02:32] How would somebody know if they're getting bad teaching?

Jay Delsing [01:02:36] They're not getting better.

Vance Crowe [01:02:37] Okay.

Jay Delsing [01:02:38] It's that simple. Unless you are absolutely horrendous athlete and you can't tie your shoes, you know, there's, there's ways to help people to try to get them better. You know? And not everybody is gonna be able to do, you know, I tell most of the guys that watch PGA tour players don't watch them. I mean, watch them, but don't try to emulate them. Watch the LPGA players. They're much more relatable. 'cause you guys can't create the sort of speed that the, these modern tour players create. So your ball distances and everything are gonna be so skewed. You're gonna feel like, Ugh, this sucks. You know? But it's not fair. These guys are that, that they're, they're so much better than like the best golfer. You know, let's say you go to where, you know, your father-in-law hangs out at his club or something, and there's somebody that's a scratch golfer. That means every time he plays, he shoots around even par actually it means he shoots around what the course is rated, which is probably one over par. So every day goes in there and he's pretty much looked upon as the best player in his course at that course. I can go at my age and I can't hardly beat anybody anymore. And I could probably beat him somewhere between five and 10 strokes every single day.

Vance Crowe [01:03:49] Really? Yeah.

Jay Delsing [01:03:51] And then to the big differentiator Vance, is that I'll, we can go to a different corset. Neither of us know, and it's not gonna affect me. He's gonna fall apart. He's really good at a corset. He knows, he knows the greens, he knows this hole. He knows what to do. Try taking your game on the road. Try taking your game on the road. Go to different grasses, go to different sand, go to sleep in a hotel. Oh, I slept like crap last night. Oh, my back hurts. Oh, you gotta go play. You're trying to make a living. Oh, that's right. Okay. Whole different ballgame. And you gotta, you know, you, you've gotta figure it out. How does this grass compare to the grass at home? Well, this is wiry, this is different. This is wispy. Oh, what about the sand? This sand is packed and we gotta hit bunker shots this way. This is kind of hard. And more like a rivery sand. I've gotta, you know, I got, I, I can't take as much sand 'cause the ball won't come out. You get in there and practice and it's like the school of hard knocks, man. You just get in there and you start figuring it out. And

Vance Crowe [01:04:44] So if you have a teacher that happens to be from the country club that everybody knows 'cause he's the best golfer at the country club, it could be that a big part of his advantage is that he's got the home field advantage, not because he necessarily knows how to drive.

Jay Delsing [01:04:58] Right. Now, not all good players are good teachers, but I really think if you're gonna be a good teacher, you have to have some ability to play.

Vance Crowe [01:05:07] Oh, I totally agree. You

Jay Delsing [01:05:08] Gotta have some ability.

Vance Crowe [01:05:09] I mean, like, you, you gotta, that's in, that's in every sport, right? Like if you're, if you're gonna teach people how to lift, you better be able to lift heavy, right? Yeah,

Jay Delsing [01:05:15] Yeah. You better be able to do it

Vance Crowe [01:05:16] In jiujitsu. You better, you better, you better know how to roll.

Jay Delsing [01:05:19] Yeah, right. It's, it's, it's weird. My dad said some of the best hitting guys helped them with his hitting. Were not good hitters, but they could see what to do. But the point I think that we're making there is they were in the game, they played the game. It's, you know, you've gotta, you, you know, how do you explain to Mrs. Smith when she gets nervous, how to handle those nerves if you don't know what it's like to have this crazy amount of adrenaline running through your body, and now you gotta try to swing this golf club and hit this high soft shot when all you wanna do is hit it as hard as you can. 'cause your adrenaline is saying, go, go, go, go. How do you do that? So, well, you have to do, you have to learn how to do that.

Vance Crowe [01:05:56] So

Jay Delsing [01:05:57] From

Vance Crowe [01:05:57] Being in high pressure, PGA, you know, money on the line, reputation on the line, your ability to play next year. Yeah.

Jay Delsing [01:06:05] On

Vance Crowe [01:06:05] The line. What do you know about controlling anxiety?

Jay Delsing [01:06:09] Oh man, breathing is just gigantic. Breathing is just gigantic. And what the most important thing is your mind is your most power. I don't care what walk of life we are. Every single dude and person that sat in this chair that talked to you, their mind is their best, biggest asset. A hundred percent. Doesn't matter what we're doing, how you think, the only thing they know about modern psychology, that's for sure is you get what you think.

Vance Crowe [01:06:34] Oh, that's good.

Jay Delsing [01:06:35] You get what you think the most, you get what you spend the most of your time thinking about. You're thinking about fear and you're thinking about this sucks. And oh man, I'm afraid of this and this might happen to me. The other shoe's gonna fall, something's gotta happen. But if you're thinking about abundance, you're thinking about love, you're thinking about all those things on the positive side of that thing, man, you're gonna attract that kind of stuff. The law of attraction is huge. Do you meditate? And I believe it. I do.

Vance Crowe [01:07:02] And tell me about your meditation. It's

Jay Delsing [01:07:04] Crazy. I remember like 20 years ago buying this like Meditation for Dummies book, you know, and I was, I was realizing that when I was doing my mental prep before I played, I needed to be able to get a little more relaxed. I wanted to get into this a little more. So I started meditating. I had this own experience. I'll never forget. I was, I had my kids out with me and we were in a, like a, like a Summerfield Suites or something, just some sort of, you know, middle of the range hotel. I had a couple of hotel rooms and I, I would go into the bathroom when the, you know, and try to do my prep for the night before. And I started this meditating. So I'd go in there and kinda make it a little dark. And I went on this crazy trip where I, I would just went, I was floating and I was like observing. And it was, I was, man, I I, I've never ever, ever been able to get quite back into it that deeply that I was that night. And I miss it.

Vance Crowe [01:07:56] Well, they say

Jay Delsing [01:07:57] That because it was so

Vance Crowe [01:07:58] Cool. So, so where'd you go on your trip? What was it? Oh,

Jay Delsing [01:08:01] I don't even think that's where it was. It wasn't a destination, it was a state of mind. I was just, you know what I saw, it was like I was observing my own life and just observing life in general. And I was just, and everything was cool, relaxed. It was, it was all gonna work out fine. And, and it was just this state of mind that was, man, I, I went to the golf course the next day. I had the best day. I didn't play the best round I ever played. I did play well, but it was just like, oh man,

Vance Crowe [01:08:32] That, that was the crazy thing for me. So I started meditation, I don't know, not that long ago, maybe four or five months ago. And all of a sudden you start realizing, I'm noticing that the birds are chirping in a way that I would've just passed that by before. Like, it brings you a level of consciousness where you're saying, this moment right now is the only moment I have. The one that was in the past is gone and I can't live in the future. Right.

Jay Delsing [01:08:56] But

Vance Crowe [01:08:56] That's something people can say. But until you've experienced it in meditation

Jay Delsing [01:09:01] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:09:01] You don't have it. And, and for me it's been, it's been wonderful.

Jay Delsing [01:09:06] So did you, did that level of awareness start increasing and other things like hearing the birds chirp is a great example in it because you're like, wait a minute, that guy's been in my tree for probably three years and I'm just now hearing him today.

Vance Crowe [01:09:20] Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, like, I just, just in talking with us, like I have to remind myself, so one time I I, I did an interview with a guy named Jordan Peterson. I probably may may not mean anything to you, but I took him to the American Farm Bureau and he was giving a speech, he's an exceptional orator. He's giving a speech and I'm sitting right next to him. And he is so powerful that the only way that I could describe it was, it was like standing next to plutonium. It, it was, it was like he was a burst of energy that I had never felt before. And I had to be like, Hey, stay present. Yeah.

Jay Delsing [01:09:56] Because

Vance Crowe [01:09:57] This is a moment that's going to disappear and you can't just be wrapped up in the fact that it is happening, Be there. Right. You know? And, and once I had that experience, then that led me down the path of looking for, wait, there's gotta be more to this. Trying to find present moments. And that's when I found meditation. And then from there I continue to try and have, like you talk about the, the, the kind of psychedelic experience in your bathroom. And I talk about it a lot of like just reminding myself, I'm in this moment right here because I can dwell definitely on the past and plan way into the future. And forget that this present moment is the only one you have.

Jay Delsing [01:10:35] Have you ever done any acupuncture?

Vance Crowe [01:10:37] I have not. Uhuh

Jay Delsing [01:10:38] I've done that too. And I had some crazy experiences with that. Really just where I, I was, I wanted to meditate and I had these needles in me and I was stormy not not scary, just, just like floating in the, and, and I felt had that floating experience again, but it was just, you know, almost chaotic. It was, it wasn't scary, but it was almost just like the whirlwind, I couldn't quite grasp what was happening. It was really crazy. I had it multiple times. I, I did these treatments for my back when I, I told you when I was 50, I had back surgery and I really struggled with this recovery. It was supposed to be simple. And mine unfortunately wasn't. But that acupuncture experience was really a cool thing too.

Vance Crowe [01:11:24] One of the things that, that meditation has led me to, I haven't done it yet. I'll be interested to hear if you have, but I used to be kind of afraid of being alone. And I don't mean like afraid of it. I I used to go camping by myself, but I mean, like, not distracted.

Jay Delsing [01:11:37] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:11:37] And you know, they have these sensory deprivation tanks. Have you seen these?

Jay Delsing [01:11:41] I have.

Vance Crowe [01:11:42] Have you done one?

Jay Delsing [01:11:42] No.

Vance Crowe [01:11:43] So I, I am now looking forward to go. Maybe, maybe you and I could go do that sometime. Right on. Because I, I have been, up until I started meditating, I used to think that would be the worst thing you could do to me is put me in a coffin size, you know, thing, and then take away all the sensation. I'd be left with just my thoughts. But once you've done meditation, you're like, there's all these wonderful thoughts I never get access to. Exactly.

Jay Delsing [01:12:05] And there's abundance everywhere. I'm a abundant guy. Have you ever had a MRI?

Vance Crowe [01:12:10] No. Uhuh.

Jay Delsing [01:12:11] Really?

Vance Crowe [01:12:12] Uhuh.

Jay Delsing [01:12:12] Oh. Well it'd, it'd, it'd be one of these deprivation tanks on steroids because you're in a tube and there're this, there's crazy, you have headphones on, crazy loud noises as this magnetic renaissance. Get in here with the microphone. Yeah. This magnet, sorry. This the MRI machine is doing its thing and you're the, the tube's this far from you.

Vance Crowe [01:12:39] Oh man, that would freak me out. Oh man,

Jay Delsing [01:12:41] I gotta tell you, I had some of my best trips really Close my eyes relax and just go, go, go out. And then, but there were times where I had to do some pointed, like I I I would call it more like poignant meditating on certain, you know, things that would get me through it. And I could easily, I found myself easily being able to get lost in there. Those thoughts and those experiences and past experiences and fu you know, and going like, oh, I was on the beach, this was so cool, remember? And I just kind of go, yeah, I remember the, the sand smelled and how, 'cause one of the things that I read in meditation is the more that you can engage your senses, can you feel the sand on your feet? Yeah. I can feel Can you smell that sunscreen you just put Yeah. The ocean smell. Oh, you know, you start engaging more of those, those sensory components and all of a sudden you're like, this is a full body thing. You know, you're going from your head to your toe and you're going, this is, yeah, right on. This is pretty cool.

Vance Crowe [01:13:41] I mean, that sounds awesome. I, I started meditation with, with an app actually. So there's, there's a guy named Sam Harris and he, he's written all these books on meditation, but he has an app called Waking Up. And so you just flip it on and for 10 minutes he's essentially like every, you know, 30 or 40 seconds, he reminds you like, Hey, have you drifted off now, get back here, come back and, and now I don't need it. But it was a really, really good on ramp. And once you have that, that's a tool that like people genuinely, genuinely do not understand how,

Jay Delsing [01:14:16] How much

Vance Crowe [01:14:17] Of their time is spent not in the present.

Jay Delsing [01:14:20] Right,

Vance Crowe [01:14:20] Right.

Jay Delsing [01:14:21] Oh, I'm still guilty of it. I wish I, I didn't spend as much time in the, I like to spend most of my time in, if I'm gonna get off the present, I'll be in the future, but sometimes I get kind of swallowed up on some of the junk that's still in my life from the past that I have to deal with that's not pleasurable and kind of a pain. But yeah, I, I get it. It's really a probably, you know, I, I don't know, some folks might be listening to us going, these guys are, are they like doing LSD? What are they talking about? And, but what what's really interesting is that you get a connection to your own life that you, otherwise I'll speak from my own. You get a connection to what you're doing in a different way in your own life. And go, where have I been?

Vance Crowe [01:15:13] I mean that's where

Jay Delsing [01:15:14] Have I, where, where the hell did I just, where did I, what did I just do?

Vance Crowe [01:15:17] You are describing it exactly. Right. Like, and now that I've been doing meditation, sometimes I'll take a nap and then, you know, you wake up and you're a little bit groggy, but then I have that thought, you are alive. You won't always be alive, but you're alive right now. And it makes me be able to just pop up and be like, instead of going through all those phases where you're kind of tired, then you slump. Yeah. Then you're like, wow, look

Jay Delsing [01:15:39] At

Vance Crowe [01:15:39] This room. Yeah,

Jay Delsing [01:15:40] Look at,

Vance Crowe [01:15:40] Look at how fortunate I am to be here. Look at a, meditation was probably the most important thing to, to c come across my path in the last year. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Really changed my life.

Jay Delsing [01:15:52] Have you ever seen that commercial where that guy and his family, he's like laying in his bed, his family come in and they give him a gift and you don't know what this commercial is selling. Right. They give him a gift and he opens it up and it's like a cup of coffee and he's like, oh my God, this is awesome.

Vance Crowe [01:16:08] A cup of

Jay Delsing [01:16:08] Coffee. I have a cup of coffee. And then his wife comes in and goes, look. And we have coffee and she puts coffee in there and they're like, this is awesome. It's like, run through these series of opening gifts and ex re-exploring or re connecting with everyday stuff. Yeah. I have a car. He goes outside. He is like, this is my car. You know, and it's kinda like, pay attention. You don't have to be as lucky as we are, man. You know, you get out, you, oh, I hate my car. You got a nice car. Look what the rest of the world's driving. You've got a, you've got a car. I, there's people in India that don't even, you know,

Vance Crowe [01:16:48] I was in the Peace Corps for, for a time and was living in Kenya and I came back and it was actually kinda sudden I got sick and I had to come home early. So I remember I was in Amsterdam, which the, the airport there is one of the nicest in the world. And I, I'm leaning over to get a drink of water and I, and as soon as it touches my mouth, it's cold. And I haven't had cold water from living in Kenya in, in however long I was there, six months, eight months, something like that. And, and I was just like caught off guard. And then all of a sudden I panicked because I was like, oh my God, I didn't boil this. And because you had to boil all the water. Right, right. So it was always warm, even if you got it from a cool source, you had to, you had to boil it. And, and then all of a sudden I was like, oh wait a second. You don't have to worry about any of the water that you drink at all again if you choose not to. Right,

Jay Delsing [01:17:37] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:17:37] Unless I go drink from a stream. Right. As long as I'm in the western world. Right.

Jay Delsing [01:17:42] And,

Vance Crowe [01:17:42] And being joyful about this. Right. Right. 'cause I just spent six months where every single drop of water I was worried about. Right.

Jay Delsing [01:17:49] And

Vance Crowe [01:17:49] We don't have that at all here.

Jay Delsing [01:17:51] Similar story. I had a buddy that I played golf with from Namibia. Okay. And he came over and he played golf at college and states and played on tour for a few years. A good friend of mine. And we were driving somewhere and I said to him, Hey bud, so you grew up in Africa and you know, this is crazy dirt roads. You just told me about the way you grew up and what is the coolest things in our country? What are the two coolest things in our country that we completely take it for granted? And he said, first of all, he said water. He goes, man, you got the, we got the greatest water. It's tastes great. And it's so bountiful. It's plentiful, it's everywhere. You can ski in it, you can swim in. It's just everywhere. And he goes, we don't have any. And I went, man, you know, think about that. You know, you go to Minnesota and go, we got water everywhere now. You know, we don't even care about lakes up there. 'cause there's so many. And then he said, your roads, he goes, we can't get where we want to go. You guys can get from here to wherever you can go. You can darn near drive anywhere.

Vance Crowe [01:18:55] Yeah. Where I was in Kenya, the roads were, were all pretty good because there was an election coming up. Yeah. And that's when they, that's when the guys say, oh hey, let's go build some roads. Yeah. Right. But years in between elections, there's no

Jay Delsing [01:19:08] Roads. No. You think about that and you think about our country and what a phenomenal country we have. What a what a, these opportunities, you and I are hanging out here for a couple hours, do whatever the hell we want. We're talking about what we want. We have the freedom to do what we want. And you went, you were on the Peace Corps. I, you know, took different paths, but we got to take our path. We had our path. We didn't have to do one thing. We didn't have to do another, we were, we were able to choose. So we were free. You know, you,

Vance Crowe [01:19:37] You were kind

Jay Delsing [01:19:37] Of, we're

Vance Crowe [01:19:38] Both kinda hitting on this idea of you hit a homeostasis, right? You hit this point where you're like, you know, the, the guy that is excited about his coffee, but we, you know, we all have that cup of coffee. We all have that car. It's gotta be true in golf where no matter how good you get, there's always this like, oh, I could be better no doubt. And I could, I could be stretching.

Jay Delsing [01:20:00] You never own golf, you just borrow it for a little bit. The best players in the world. Look at Tiger Woods. He didn't make the cut this week, week at the British Open.

Vance Crowe [01:20:08] Oh, I didn't know that.

Jay Delsing [01:20:09] No, I know you didn't. That's okay. It's good. No, but I mean it's, it's, I think that's part of what is the allure is that you don't know. You don't know what you're gonna get.

Vance Crowe [01:20:18] And so how as a how as an athlete, if you're like, Hey, you know, I am trying to move my way towards being the best. Yeah. But I also have this philosophy of abundance and this I'm present in the moment and I'm happy with what I have. Those two things seem to be dichotomies Right. In opposition of one another.

Jay Delsing [01:20:38] Yeah. But, but, but you don't spend your time, you can't spend your time thinking about being the best. You have to put a plan together so that this present moment when you go to work on some part of your game, you know that it, once I get better and better at this part of my game, it's gonna move me to, it's a process. You get locked into these processes. I'm gonna work on my putting. I know I can't hold every put now, nobody that's ever played is hold to every putt. And I know I got all I can. I just have to run through my pre-shot routine and I gotta roll that ball as well as I can. And if it goes in, it goes in. If it doesn't, I gotta pretend like it went in. I gotta tell myself, that was a great putt, man. You had a great putt. I know it didn't go in, doesn't matter. I'm just gonna do that again. And that sucks. When you go through a day and you're doing that all day long and you're rolling these balls, great. And they're just going

Vance Crowe [01:21:28] Right

Jay Delsing [01:21:28] Over the edge of the hole. They're liping out, they're just doing everything they can to test you. And you just gotta, that, you just gotta try to keep your resolve. What

Vance Crowe [01:21:37] Is it like to see these people that are high achievers that, that are now out playing golf and you have this understanding of like, Hey, you just, you just gotta be there. You're present. You, you should be happy. I mean, is it, is it like you wish you could reach 'em? Like,

Jay Delsing [01:21:52] Oh man, like if I'm respectful of everybody and so I'm not gonna go up and go, Hey, here, here, listen to me. But if they come and say to you know, Hey, can you help me? I'm like,

Vance Crowe [01:22:03] Let

Jay Delsing [01:22:03] Me just give you a couple of ideas. First of all, you know, dump a couple stats on them. So facts are facts, right? It's not my opinion, it's not your opinion. It's a fact. And so you can hang your hat on a fact. Now if I say something like, you know, we're all, we're all just borrowing, renting the game. We're not all that good at it. He's gonna go like, yeah, whatever, you know, Pollyanna, I don't wanna listen to him. That's not a fact. So you different personalities, you have to approach differently. Some guys are like, you know, hey, what's, you know, what's the secret? You know? And I'm like, well the secret is there's no secret. And it's like, like doctors are great. So I go to cocktail parties and I can, in my stage in my life, Vince, I can go in, I could put like a green dot on a doctor and a red dot on a, a accountant. Really?

Vance Crowe [01:22:52] Oh

Jay Delsing [01:22:52] Yeah. I can, the personalities are just, they're, they're beautiful because docs have have been raised and taught and bred to think that if there's enough information, they can figure anything out. Which is great when it comes to being, you know, if you need somebody to figure out your problems in your body, that's a great way to be. Right?

Vance Crowe [01:23:13] Yeah.

Jay Delsing [01:23:13] But that doesn't translate on the golf course. And every once in a while I've had to say to the doc like, look, you know, I can see he's like, you are holding out on me. You're not giving me all the information I need. If you could just gimme a little bit more information, I could be as good as you. And that's insulting because I've spent my whole life doing this.

Vance Crowe [01:23:31] Yeah. And

Jay Delsing [01:23:32] I'll say, doc, there's one component. Alright, alright, I'll give it to you. I'll tell you what the component is.

Vance Crowe [01:23:37] And

Jay Delsing [01:23:37] He's like, I knew it, I knew it was finally there and I'm gonna go, okay, it's here. Here's what it is. Talent.

Vance Crowe [01:23:44] You

Jay Delsing [01:23:44] Just don't have enough of it. And he'll look at me, I go, I'm sorry, I just gotta tell you, you can't read that in a book. And you can't just have that osmos from a video over into your bag. You gotta have some athletic ability. It's a kid with a stick in a ball. It's like Wayne Gretzky with a stick in a puck. And it, you know, Michael Jordan got cut from his freshman basketball team and never forgot that feeling. He said in his little black book, I use that feeling to motivate me every day. You know, so that's the kind of stuff, and you just not, they, you just don't. And thank God, right, because I mean, what if somebody at 50 years old decided to pick up the game and they really could be as good as we are and we spent our whole life trying to be like that. It wouldn't be right.

Vance Crowe [01:24:29] Yeah. We certainly wouldn't feel very fair. That's

Jay Delsing [01:24:31] Right. No, life wouldn't be fair like that. And I, and the game's not like that. And you know what? Nothing's really like that. Right?

Vance Crowe [01:24:36] I

Jay Delsing [01:24:37] Can't come into your space and do what you do and Oh, that, that looks pretty easy. I think I'll go ahead and, you know, do what he does and in like three hours I'll be as good as him. That's a bunch of crap. Well,

Vance Crowe [01:24:47] You know, in my world. So I, I go out and give a lot of talks and a lot of times young people will come up and they'll be like, Hey, I wanna do what you're doing. Yeah. And my only advice for them is then go start giving talks because there's you, the, the whole feeling of connecting with an audience and finding out what is it that they want to understand that, you know, uniquely or how can you share something with them. There's, you can't read it in a book. You can't imagine your way to it. You can only do it by going up to on that stage hundreds of times. Right on and doing what everybody says. You gotta fail and you gotta succeed. But, but like, you gotta just do it.

Jay Delsing [01:25:24] Okay. So remember the first time you went up in front of what's the most number of people you've talked in front of? Oh,

Vance Crowe [01:25:28] A couple thousand, you know? Okay,

Jay Delsing [01:25:29] Cool. So you talked in front of a couple thousand, remember the first time you did that?

Vance Crowe [01:25:32] Yeah. So

Jay Delsing [01:25:33] You're walking on that stage and you look up and you see what,

Vance Crowe [01:25:36] Oh, just lots of people there, lots

Jay Delsing [01:25:37] Of lights, lots, lots of nothing. Right? Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:25:40] That's right.

Jay Delsing [01:25:40] So, okay, so what was running through your body at the time? Can you remember?

Vance Crowe [01:25:45] Oh, I mean, yeah. So

Jay Delsing [01:25:45] Now what's running through your brain? What's running through your body? What are you feeling? What are you breathing? What's like, is your chest pounding? Are you, are, are your palms sweaty? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:25:54] So I have the, the, the unique thing that it, I don't get too, too nervous. I get a metallic taste in my mouth and, and I get this kind of smile on my face that isn't, it isn't a happy smile, it's just like

Jay Delsing [01:26:09] Anxious energy. Yeah. Right.

Vance Crowe [01:26:11] Yeah. And I think it's a lot of anxious energy. Yeah. And it does not subside until I get the crowd to laugh at one thing. Yeah.

Jay Delsing [01:26:17] And

Vance Crowe [01:26:18] I'm not a comedian, but once you get the crowd to laugh, then it, then it's then, then everybody knows we're all in this together. We're on the same wavelength here. Right. Right. And so that, that that rises and rises and rises and rises until I can hit something with them. And if you don't,

Jay Delsing [01:26:34] Then

Vance Crowe [01:26:34] Then the feeling just wr that's like, you know, sha your first Yeah.

Jay Delsing [01:26:38] Right, right.

Vance Crowe [01:26:38] Your first team.

Jay Delsing [01:26:39] I've done public speaking before too, and that, that, you know, did you ever go through the experience of trying to think about your words when you first started speaking? Meaning instead of getting locked into your subject, like, you know what you're talking about and here's my program and boom, I'm going into it instead. You were like trying to sound smart or did, did you ever

Vance Crowe [01:27:00] Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And

Jay Delsing [01:27:02] And how effective were you?

Vance Crowe [01:27:03] Oh, bad. Yeah, bad. Right.

Jay Delsing [01:27:04] Bad. That's the same thing in sport, right? That's the same thing about trying to think your way through the sport instead of playing.

Vance Crowe [01:27:10] Oh, that's good. You know, and actually can make a comparison on that. I oftentimes do not know what my first story I'm going to tell is. It comes from whoever I'm sitting with right before I get invited. Usually there's like a dinner or there's something going on and I will sit there and I always say, Hey, the thing that you can do that's best for me is sit me next to the person that is the most talkative in your whole organization. And then let me sit down next to them. Yeah. And, and let them talk. Yeah. And they're gonna say something that's gonna make me go. Got it.

Jay Delsing [01:27:40] Yeah. And so how about that feeling? So explain to me that feeling that you had between, oh man, this sucks. I'm not connecting. I can't get that chuckle. I'm not, I'm, I'm, I'm just missing compared to boom, I got it. Oh, right out of the heart.

Vance Crowe [01:27:55] Yeah, there's, there's nothing. There's the, the, once you get it, I often describe it as surfing, right? It's, it's like feeling a wave, pull you up and then getting to rock it down on it. And it's, it's pure ecstasy. There is, there is nothing on earth like it. And, and there's nothing like it for the audience either. Right. They, they feel that as well. If you,

Jay Delsing [01:28:15] If you lock

Vance Crowe [01:28:16] In,

Jay Delsing [01:28:16] Sure.

Vance Crowe [01:28:16] They are just as happy as you are to have locked in and now we're, now we're heading on a ride.

Jay Delsing [01:28:21] Yeah. So you're doing that and you're feeling that run through your body and now as you're running down a wave, there's adrenaline run through you. Right. There's yeah. That's, that similarity is like that in golf as well. You're getting this full body experience about doing something that is playing really good golf in front of a bunch of people when you're really nervous. Great feeling.

Vance Crowe [01:28:44] Oh man, it's a

Jay Delsing [01:28:45] Great feeling. It's just like you nailed,

Vance Crowe [01:28:47] You did it Jay, you did it. You you got, you made the connection on golf. I I did not. I would not have made that connection. That's very

Jay Delsing [01:28:54] Interesting. Yeah. That's, so you like that feeling of connecting with that audience and that first, you know, that first comical moment, man, that's what we're that's what we, that's what we feel.

Vance Crowe [01:29:05] Wow.

Jay Delsing [01:29:06] Yeah. That's a good feeling. We wanna do that over and over and over again.

Vance Crowe [01:29:09] Amen. Well I tell you the other feeling is connecting with a guest and, and finding that you have a lot more in common. This has been absolutely great, Jay, I'm so glad to stop

Jay Delsing [01:29:18] By. Thanks, thanks

Vance Crowe [01:29:19] For having we'll having you back again for, so thank you very much

Jay Delsing [01:29:21] For Yeah, pleasure.

Vance Crowe [01:29:22] Alright, that's it for this week's interview. I want to thank Jay Delsing for stopping by the studio. You can find Jay on Twitter and he also has a great website, jay delsing golf.com, where you can find out more about his radio show. And I think he even books some of his professional tours there. Thank you Jay, so much for stopping by. One final note that I wanna make before I clear out, I am so appreciative of all the reviews that people have given me on iTunes, the thumbs up and the subscribes on YouTube, and probably even more than that, the people that are commenting and, and interacting with me on Twitter after I published some of these episodes. There are two people this week that stuck out to me and I just wanted to point 'em out. One is a man named Keaton Krueger who following my nutrition podcast with Connie Dickman, has had lots and lots of back and forths with me. And I find his commentary, some of his insights and his point of views to be absolutely fun and entertaining. And, and, and I'm glad that he reaches out. There's another guy named Dusty Rich, he goes by D Rich 82 on Twitter. He gave me a big shout out and we had a fun back and forth and I was just really appreciative that he took the time to do it. So if you are out on Twitter, make sure you gimme a shout and let me know what you like about this show, if there's anybody you think I should interview and anything I can do to make this whole thing better. So thank you so much for stopping by. We'll be back next week hopefully with a banker, but we'll see if I can make this all come together. So thanks so much and we'll see you next week.