← Living The Next Chapter: Candid Conversations with Authors and Writers for Readers Searching for a New Read
Living The Next Chapter: Candid Conversations with Authors and Writers for Readers Searching for a New Read
E360 - Bob Young - True Golf - the story of Moe Norman and a new song with Bob's brother Neil Young
00:56:44
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- [00:01]
David
Everyone, welcome to Living the Next Chapter. Glad to be here with you. Today's a little different. I love every guest we have on the show, and it's exciting for me to get to meet great authors from around the world. Today is super special for me as a Canadian and as a musician, I get the chance to sit down with a gentleman. His name is Bob Young, and Bob is a great person to talk to. Super amazing to talk to. His background is deep, the well that he draws from, deep. And he has a very famous younger brother, Canadian icon Neil Young. You'll know him from music. If you've listened to the radio at all, you probably have heard of Neil Young. So I had Bob come on to talk about his new book. We had a great conversation. We jumped in right away, like right in. I didn't even have time to do the intro. The conversation was awesome. So I'm gonna make this episode a little different. It's gonna be kind of a magazine st. I'm going to pop in here and there with you, kind of set up my next question that I asked Bob and give you a little different listening experience here on Living the Next Chapter than what you're used to. So that's why I wanted to jump on the beginning and introduce you to an amazing person. A thrill for me to have on the show. And again, I'm here to celebrate great authors. I love great Canadian authors and I love great Canadian musicians. So I'm in my happy place and I wanted to share with you here on the podcast. This is Bob Young living the Next Chapter. Talk about his book, his musical family, and the great things happening in his life here on Living the Next Chapter. Here's Bob. Here's a little snippet of what we're going to talk about.
- [01:52]
Bob Young
People who are fans of Neil's will see in that something that, to my knowledge, nobody's ever done before. I've never. I've never done interviews about Neil, but he and I talking together, there's stuff in there that no interview would ever stumble upon. Probably our cousin is editing the thing who knows us, and she was the news editor at major television stations for years and knows how to do this. So she's in charge of that a little bit. It looks like it'll be really interesting. So the Neil Young fan base out there and probably interviewers have been trying to figure. Figure out how to get him to do an interview for the last 50 or 60 years. We'll look at this and they'll see stuff in there that they never would have gotten to and never will. He doesn't do that stuff. And the people in the family and our friends, when they're approached about Neil, they usually refuse to discuss it, which is, you know, because they don't want to. They don't want to say something that isn't. That shouldn't be said, or they just don't want to become an avenue in Neil's career. They figure whoever that is should be going to his management company and talking to him, not to somebody that he went to school with or something. You know, that's really the reason. And I've done the same thing. If you writing come to me, I'll say no, eventually I'll write my own book and, you know, maybe. And I will. Simple foreign.
- [03:41]
David
So I had started off asking Bob about a song that he had written along with his brother and was featured in conjunction with the release of the book and to get his thoughts about the song and, and all that. It's a great. I'll have a link to it in the show notes where you can actually see the band performing. But again, so great to have Bob on to talk about writing music with his brother and, and all that. So here's Bob talking a little bit about the song that corresponds with the book release here on the podcast. Here we go.
- [04:20]
Bob Young
Well, that song is, as you mentioned, it. It's. It's a findable through, I guess it's final through my website, BobyEnvolve.com, but it's on YouTube. Get to it on YouTube. The last time anybody asked me about it, I was in a little pub in Florida a couple of weeks ago. And how did we do it? I think finally ran up the song title, hey America. That's what it. America Neil Young. And then it went. It might have been connected to Neil Young archives. So then the YouTube thing came up and it said, hey, America Young Bob and the Peterboroughs. Which was the name of the band I used when we, when. When we recorded it. Yeah, we did it in Peterborough. So two and a half years ago. Actually two years ago last October. Anyhow, now the lyric in that song, if you listen to, was relevant when I wrote it. And now if anything, given what's going on in the United States especially, it's more relevant. So I think I'm going to call a few. I'll talk to my brother about it and send his management company and say, you think anybody else would be interested in covering this song? Because it actually, you know, when I tell people what the lyric are I watch these guys in this little bar called Moe's Bar in Smyrna Beach, Florida. No relation to Mo Norman. Mo was their last name. As a matter of fact, they grew the family in Nice, Smyrna Beach. And they liked the lyric, the line in it that says something like, hey, America, give love a chance. You're the beacon of freedom, liberty free. The line set liberty free strikes it a harmonic in the marinate mind of a US citizen who. Especially somebody who's paying attention. And, I don't know, we'll see what happens with it. Maybe nothing will happen, but if people started playing, it'd be interesting to see what I mean from my perspective. I'd never done a song before. That's it, one song.
- [06:34]
David
So I asked Bob a little bit more about the song and how it came to be. And he gave us a little more information about the writing process of the song. And here's what his thoughts were. It's.
- [06:44]
Bob Young
In some respects, I. You know, initially I thought it was sort of like a fluke that I did it because I saw something on television one day and wrote down a car. I had a couple of lines in mind. And when I picked up my guitar, I discovered I could actually play it. I could, you know, knew the chords and I could start singing the song. But I had never written a song and sung it from one end to the other. I don't. I did never done that. So I just kept adding to the lyric and I kept playing the thing. It's very simple musically, but lyrically it makes sense. So I just kept doing it. And it took me quite a while to figure out how to get it in my mind so that I could pick up the guitar and play the whole song. Now I've got six, seven, eight songs, a couple on a piano. Once I figured out the process.
- [07:33]
David
So we jump from talking about the song that accompanies the book to the book itself. And Bob talks about his time with Mo Norman, famous golfer. And some of the stories that his book includes about this interesting character. And this is what Bob was saying.
- [07:50]
Bob Young
The point here, this book is mine to Golf. About my experience with Mo Norman, who's a famous ball striker in the game, equal to Ben Hogan. I knew him really well. We played together for 40 years and had a private practice area or two in Florida south of the Daytona beach area. Nice Smyrna beach also. And places the odd time players off the PGA Tour who knew how to find us would show up and watch him hit balls and talk. And that was interesting. Some of those guys, they were really good, but he was better. And I hit probably somewhere maybe in the vicinity of 800,000 to a million golf balls with Mo. And we had private practice area where we'd meet and hit 250 or 300 balls every morning. That was just the beginning of the day. But the whole day was. Golf was hooked into it. So he had such a thorough grasp of what caused the ball to go from wherever it is to where you want it to be next. That. But he didn't have the. He didn't know how to articulate it, so. But he would tell me everything he could as best he could. So he said things that were, yeah, you have to have a quiet mind. And then he said, it's like music. But what he meant was, you have to have a quiet mind. Well, if you get into metaphysical discussions, a quiet mind can be a long way into the mind world. You know, there are people living in the Tibetan mountains for the. For centuries who've been. They have quiet minds also. Mo's idea of a quiet mind. He didn't let people interfere with his quiet mind. And if that happened, he would disappear and he wouldn't go back to wherever that happened. That was the way he dealt with it. And it worked. But that was. He stayed away from things that. That didn't meld with his view of the world.
- [10:05]
David
I asked Bob how he actually met Mo originally, how this whole relationship started, that the two of them would be so close together. And this is how it all began for Bob and Mo.
- [10:19]
Bob Young
Well, I played amateur golf tournaments when I was a kid and was one of the better amateurs in the province of Ontario. And mo had most. 10, 12 years older than me. So I see him at the tournament city. Gradually got to know who I was because I was always at the golf tournaments. And then when I joined the Canadian pga, he had already become a member of it. He was basically had no choice. And he come to the golf course that I was connected to. Pine Valley Golf Club in Woodbridge, Ontario, is now the national club, the pro. There was a guy called George Clifton, a very hospitable and leggable in soul fast. You know, a real. He's one of the people that actually had the energy with others that helped create the Canadian Tour, which I play. I was interested in playing the game. I didn't want to work in a pro shop and sell golf balls and be nice to the members. I could be nice to them, but I would rather play golf. So I know it was what Mo did. Mo Would show up bouncing the ball on his golf club and get a few shots and go play nine holes or something. I just got to know him. And then where we all went in Florida was a place called Ormond beach, which is on the north side of Daytona Golf Course called Tomoka Oaks and Rafter. Canadian golf pros would show up there. People who like playing the game and hit balls, practice and play golf. So we did that in the winter and Mo was there too. And LV Thompson, who was eventually a Canadian PGA champion. Great striker golf balls too. And the best putter than Mo Norman and I ever encountered. Well, if you look at my book, the last chapter is called the I think It's a Magic of Putting. Describes what Albie Thompson told me. Now I have others. You know, I've been in Florida. The weather wasn't very good where I was. So I hit a lot of putts. And it's very interesting doing that for three or four months. I did that. And I hit balls too, but. I know. But I hit a lot of putts. Interesting. The mechanics of putting are very similar to a full shot when you figure out what actually makes it worth. Right. The mental side of it.
- [12:44]
David
So Moe was a very unique golfer. And I asked Bob about the technique that Moe used in his golfing. And he kind of broke down a little bit about Moe's approach to golf and gave us a little background into the technique behind how Mo's golf was so successful as a player. This is what he had to say.
- [13:07]
Bob Young
The technique is described in my book, but basically you put the ball at the target that you that's sitting in front of you put it at the target. Exactly at the target. Look up in the air and you'll sense the place where it begins its descent, the apex of the flight. Your mind and eyes come back along that line to where you are and you feel it. You just keep doing it. And your body will pick up the feeling. You start to make the right moves to get the ball to fly into the image that you've created. So deliver the energy into the image. That's the thing. And then the more energy you know how to tune to, the better the results get. It's actually that energy that's used in the power for creating the image of the shot to be. It's the same energy that's used to create the song I was talking about.
- [14:06]
David
So again, as a musician talking to Bob, I'm like having a full circle moment here again talking to musical royalty from the Young family with Neil as His younger brother. But he gets into the a little bit more about him and Neil and working and crafting the song that we talked about near the beginning of the episode. Get a little more detail behind the scenes around how the song ties into the book and how this is all communicated to Neil's network of fans. And it's exciting to kind of get this behind the scenes about all this, how this all works. And I think you're going to enjoy this, especially if you're a Neil Young fan. Bob Young, fan, fan of golf, fan of music, all got you covered. Here's Bob explaining a little bit more about that connection with Neil and bringing it all together with the book.
- [14:58]
Bob Young
That's why the song's in the book. My brother and I talk about this in a zoom call and it isn't there. It's almost the edits almost finished. That's a little section. It might even be a separate audio or separate audio visual item on my website. But we've got 10 or 15 minute edit of he and I talking about a lot of different things, but golf related. It'll be on my website. Yeah. And it's my book. The book, the audiobook will go to the entire membership of Neil Young Archives, which is a 25 or 30,000 people. And it will. There's a fellow I met in Florida who's a member of Neil Young Archives, really liked the book and he liked the song and all that stuff. And he said this is a great collector's item, this audio book with a song in it. I thought that's exactly, that's a good, good thought. So we're going to, we're going to introduce it that way. This is all you golfers out there who are Neil Young archive members. You're obviously also Neil Young fans or you wouldn't be a member of Neil Young Archives. But here's this song. It's. It's not on it. It's not on any other recorded format.
- [16:30]
David
So you get that it's the only way to get this song with Neil Young on it. The only way to get it is to be part of this. So. Or check out the YouTube video. So that's pretty unique, especially for any Neil Young fans out there looking for something unique and special from Neil and Bob. Here you go. You might be hearing about this first here, but here you go. Great song.
- [16:55]
Bob Young
Available through the book if you want it. There it is at whatever redneck we're going to sell it. The normal price is 12.99. I think on the website. It'll on this thing, it'll be 9.99 and the book will be 14.99 instead of 18 bucks or 1799. So. And then a significant portion of the gross will go to the Bridge School, which is a charity. The Bridge School has been in existence for a long time and does a lot of good things for kids that are. That need the assistance. So anyhow, you know, that's what I'm going to do with the current thing we're doing with the book, is organizing it for that kind of event. And I was talking to Hart Maroney a few days ago. He owns a golf course called Tamarack, which is In Ennismore, Ontario, 15 minutes from Peterborough Bridge north, that area. And it's been there for quite a while. Got an excellent practice facility which I use. And the golf course itself is good. It's really good, actually. And he said the climate has been, you know, there's no snow. We're starting to see green grass and trees with buds on them. He said, I think we'll be open around or, you know, early April. And that's. That is early. It really. There's no snow. I live, I live in the Ktha Lakes area. The road into where I live is a dead end road. When you get to the end of it, that's where I am. And it had. They've only plowed it twice this winter and last winter when I was there, there were snow banks 8, 10, 12ft high plowed up. I mean, we had snow. The people who lived there said they hadn't seen that much snow for 30 or 40 years. Now there's nothing and there's. It's really, you know, an early season by the looks of things. So I'll be up there earlier than I thought I'd be.
- [19:12]
David
So I was curious and I asked Bob how long it took to write this book. And this is what he said.
- [19:17]
Bob Young
Well, I kept notes way back around 1979, 78, 80. I'd write stuff down when it went through my mind. So there have it. And I used to think, maybe some one of these days I'll pull this together and turn it into a book. So a couple years, three years ago or something, I was looking and I thought, well, Mo's been deceased for about 20 years and all these guys are out there beating the ball around trying to make themselves a few million dollars. And somewhere back there a few years ago, quite a few years ago, Tiger would, among others, was watching Mo hit balls. And Tiger said, only two people have ever owned Their swing, Mona and Ben Hogan. I want. He wanted. That's what I wanted to do, is what he was saying. He still wants to do it, and sometimes he does. And sometimes some of these other guys do, too. But what Mo did. I remember standing there watching them, watching them watch Mo. And Scott Simpson, who won a U.S. open years ago, said to me one day, bob, you know how lucky you are to hit balls with Moen? You know. I said, you know, I've been doing this for decades. I know it looks like exactly what it looks like. He said, it's amazing. He looks at where he wants it to go, but it's it, and it goes there.
- [20:50]
Narrator
I have a little robot that goes around with me. I tell her what I'm thinking. I tell her what I see. I tell my little robot all my hopes and fears. It listens and remembers everything it hears. At first, my little robot followed my command. But after years of training, it's gotten out of hand. It doesn't care what's right or wrong or what is false or true. But no matter what I try now, it tells me what to do right there.
- [21:17]
Bob Young
One day I said to Mo, what's in your mind right before you hit the ball? He looks at me for a few seconds and finally says, I said, what do you do right before you hit it? What do you do to. You know. Finally he says, you have to make the chosen line of aim. That was his description. So I thought about that, and I thought, you have to make the chosen line of aim. That's where the term. That's where I got the idea. You're going to make the chosen line of aim, obviously, is where the ball's going to go. And go that way. Well, he could hit it on any trajectory that he wanted to. His chosen line aim would be connected to where he wanted the ball to wind up. And so what I did was I thought, okay, there's a destination point that goes a certain distance, and then it goes into free fall. It was out of mulling that over that I came up with the idea of creating the image of the shot to be, which was basically what Mo did. You have to make the chosen line of aim. So I broke it down into, you know, so the components were. Or somebody else could come along and assemble. Making the chosen line of aim by putting the ball at the destination point, finding the apex. Mentally, you know, you don't measure anything. You just look up in the air. And what happens is you sense it. Your eyes, you find it. And if you pay attention, you Feel it in your body. I feel it in my solar plexus when I. When I. But at first I didn't even notice that. I just said, oh, it's got to go up there to fall here. I was at the practice fairway with Wally Kutcher, his son Matt, or his nephew. Matt Kutcher is a very successful PGA Tour player. You might have heard of him. And Wally, he knew where Mo and I hit balls. So every once in a while, Wally would show up. And he played the Tour, too. He actually finished, I think, third or fourth at Doral at a big tournament back in those days. That was in Miami. Anyhow, Wally standing there one day watching me hit two and a half or three wood shots, and they were practically identical. And finally he said, what are you doing? I said, I'm aiming at that purple weed out there. It's about 230 or 35 yards away. And he said, well, what you're doing is, you know, said that these shots are, you know, carbon copies of one another or worse, that effect. I said, I don't know. I'm just looking up in the air, and I can see where it's got to get to to land on the weed. And after that, I was thinking to myself, I did look up in the air. Then the next time I went out and hit balls, I did the same thing. And I noticed that I felt it, but I was just looking up in the air. My eyes came back to where it was. I had the whole thing in my mind, and I turned away from it and hit the ball. I didn't force it. I just wanted to go up. And now I have. There are refinements of this that I have. Whether I was doing this winter in Florida. So I'm going to. When it's warming up in Canada. I'm in South Carolina right now, actually. It's a perfect day right now. I just got here, so I'll probably go out there maybe later this afternoon or tomorrow with a friend of mine here and get her machine set up so she can shoot what I'm doing and record it live. And then if I start doing what I've got in mind, I can talk about it as it's happening. That way, it's got a little more spontaneity to it. And given the technology these days, like what we're using, these zoom calls, this great. I mean, all incorporated into the next thing I write about golf, which we. I'm going to do an audiobook called Cosmic Golf the Zone and the Golden Stroke. So it'll have that audio aspect to it, and a website will have the audio visual stuff that I do also. It's. My brother and I are having interesting conversations about this because he's. He, you know, he's got the machinery in place with his archive site, Neil Young archives, to use stuff like this. The zoom call that I mentioned a while ago that he and I did, that's being edited. It's. That's going to be interesting to look at. I know I've seen this, the printed version of it, the transcript, and I remember doing the conversation. So it'll go on my website, but it'll go on his website also. And people who are fans of Neil's will see in that something that, to my knowledge, nobody's ever done before. I've never. I've never done interviews about Neil, but he and I talking together, there's stuff in there that no interview would ever stumble upon. Probably our cousin is editing the thing, who knows this? And she was the news editor at major television station for years and knows how to do this, so she's in charge of that little bit. It looks like it'll be really interesting. So the Neil Young fan base out there, and probably interviewers who have been trying to figure out how to get him to do an interview for the last 50 or 60 years, we'll look at this and they'll see stuff in there that they never would have gotten to.
- [27:17]
David
So here's the point where I was like, oh, this is gold. Because again, I was so thrilled to have Bob come on my podcast to talk about his book. But then we start getting into more about Neil and how the press wants to get a piece of Neil, how they go through the family to get to Neil. And here we are, Bob and I, talking, and it just felt so natural. And again, I was so thrilled to have Bob on the podcast, and I'm so glad he went here in the conversation because I think it gives you behind the scenes about the Young family and everything that happens that you might not understand or see. And maybe the impact of media on a family like the news, like Neil Young and. And Bob Young. And just a little bit of information that I found is really interesting as a host of the podcast.
- [28:09]
Bob Young
He doesn't do that stuff. And the people in the family and our friends, when they were approached about Neil, they usually refused to discuss it. What is, you know, because they don't want to. They don't want to say something that isn't. That shouldn't be said, or they Just don't want to become an avenue in Neil's career or be. They figure whoever that is should be going to his management company and talking to him, not to somebody that he went to school with or something. You know, that's really the reason. And I've done the same thing. And people writing come to me as they know eventually I'll write my own book and you know, maybe, and I will, so.
- [28:55]
David
And that right there is a book I would love to, to read, having Bob's thoughts on, on Neil and all that. That's amazing. So I went on to, to talk to Bob more about Mo and to give us some insight into Mo. Because the interviews that I did in preparation to talk to Bob, there was a lot of interviews and a lot of commentary. That's very complicated in the golf world. Mo was very different. He was very unique, special, and didn't fit the mold of a typical air quotes golfer. And at some points it seemed like he was a little bit shunned and overlooked and sad that he didn't fit the mold. So I wanted to get Bob's thoughts on Mo and get a little bit more information, little insight behind the scenes how he saw Mo, because his relationship with Mo was very special and very unique. And here's what Bob said, you know,
- [30:00]
Bob Young
that he was essentially ostracized by some and you know, it was either the, I've forgotten whether it was the RCGA or the Ontario Golf association went to his place and his family home in Kitchener. They wanted to see all the prizes he'd won. This was when he was an amateur. Well, what they were actually doing was trying to figure out if he, if he'd been selling them. And so eventually out of that process, they revoked his amateur status and, and then he, he became a member of the Canadian pga. So, you know, he had to deal with stuff like that happening. Yeah, he didn't have anything when he was young, you know, he had no money. He used to pitch face to golf tournaments and he'd sleep in the sand traps and then win the golf tournament I heard about before I got to home. But I had no problem talking to him at all. And I always treated him as a social equal. I'd have dinner, I invited him to my place in Florida. He stayed at a friend's house all winter. One year in the Smyrna Beach. It was good. I mean, along came natural golf and Titleist. WALLY ULINE DIRECTOR Basically, in my view, probably the thinking power that created the Titleist Corporation, which is enormous. They, Wally called Forgotten when it was maybe in the early 90s, called a guy called Craig Shanklin, who was from England. Craig had been in the States for a long time. He had a golf course in New Smyrna beach called Hidden Lakes. And he did 19 years of clinics with Mullet. And one day, Wally Uhlein called him and said, you think mo would like $5,000 a month for life? Wally or Craig Shanklin said, oh, would you like $5,000 a month for life? And we'll go with that. Yes. But that's where it came from. So the Titleist Corporation, out of recognition as his for what he accomplished, that was a gesture. I was there when that happened. It changed Mo's life. All of a sudden. He had guaranteed money and he was doing okay. Right. You know, I saw him. I mean, he was very appreciative of that. And he always had this old visor that said Titleist on the top of this. As Craig Shanklin said, he probably never had it. It looked like it had never been to the washing machine, that thing. Anyhow, that was one thing. And that happened. And I thought, good for Titleist. You know, Corporation just made the right move, the right gesture. It isn't a move. An appreciation of what Mulbert accomplished and appreciate. And Mo understood it. He was. He. He was so very thankful. And because apart from people being appreciative of how good a striker golf balls he was, which he heard wherever he hit them, you know, that was something that made a huge difference to his existence. And he kept doing clinics. And it was probably a year or two before he died, we were at this club in Florida in New Smyrna Beach, And. And I said, you know, how's everything working out? And he looked and he said, bob, I got almost a million dollars saved. And I thought, wow, you know, you could be here for another 50 years or that, the way you spend money. And. But it didn't last very much longer after that. And I said, what are you going to do with it? He said, I'll give it to my family. So somewhere in his family, people gained from that. He helped them. And he had several siblings, quite a few. I never any of them. They never came to watch him play golf. I could never figure out why, but that's the way his life was. And he just. He kept going. And he was a master at what he did. But mentally, a quiet mind. As the years went by, it. To this day, it sticks in my mind as he was very deep about a lot of things. You know, he Looked at the world and rejected a lot of the things that it does. It being you, being that choices the human race makes.
- [35:08]
David
Bob talks about the timeliness of the book and what's happening in the world today, a lot about what's happening in the US and even here in Canada, and how this book really relates to what we're seeing in the news and in our world.
- [35:21]
Bob Young
And here's what he said right now is a perfect example of that. Look at what's going on. The. The power of choice has been misused, to put it moderately. Wars and problems. More wars. I mean, they've made a business out of the war equipment business. That's not a complimentary thing to say, but less obviously, I'd like to see an audit on what's going on in the Ukraine and Israel instead of abject curiosity, whatever it is, they'd be better off spent buying food for kids that don't have enough food to eat or something. So, you know, Mo would look at that. Not for me, he'd say, and he would go back to the golf course. He went to the golf course and he stayed there. That's what he did. And if he went places where people didn't. Were, you know, didn't really want him around for one reason or another, he wouldn't go back there. Then after, I'd say once in a while, I said to Mo, go over there. He said, no, I don't go there. And once in a while he'd tell me why. But. But usually, you know, I didn't even ask him if he wanted to tell me. Fine. But it was. He's a one of a kind. There's no question about that. Nobody. Everybody's a one of a kind, but was definitely unique.
- [36:51]
David
I asked Bob where that depth came from for Mo. Did he have any idea of the source of that? Because Mo thought on a different level than others. And this is how Bob described that.
- [37:06]
Bob Young
Well, he went to the. He liked. He started playing golf. He hit balls at the range at Rockaway Golf Club in Kitchener. Lloyd Tucker was a pro there. And there's a mention of Lloyd Tucker in. In my book, commenting about Mo and me, as a matter of fact. So Mo told him, you know, out of all the balls I hit, he told Lloyd Tucker what I was capable of doing. And you could read it in the book. Other people don't know. If they read the book, they'll see. They'll know what. What he said. And because Lloyd Tucker repeated it, at any rate, he. One day, Mo, look at me. We were hitting balls in Oak Hill, Florida, at a private place we had there. He looked at me, he said, bob, you're the closest in the game to Ben Hogan. And I was really accurate. If I aimed at something, I hit it. And I knew why. And I still do now because of what I wrote in this book. I've been thinking about it, and mentally, my concept of it is more refined than it was when I was doing that, which was about 40 years ago and a little longer now is, you know, the average golfer goes out there and they're trying to hit the ball and get it from the tee to the green and into the cup, as few shots as possible. And there's stuff in this book that would help them do that. The rest of it, the story. There's more. I mean, it was. You asked the question about his. His choices in his quiet mind and that, you know, he. There's reference to the fact that he was in a car accident when he was about five years old. I think he was on a sleigh or a toboggan or something and came down a hill and anyhow, Carp banged him on the head. And I guess it was a pretty serious situation. And some people think that it was because of that that he became the way he was. And then there was discussion about him possibly being autistic. However, in my view, he decided what he wanted to do. He looked at the world and he went to the golf course, and he liked hitting golf balls, so he just kept hitting them. He didn't want anything to do with the rest of this stuff. He didn't want anything to do with the business unless it had to do with winning money at a golf tournament. But, you know, that was fine, but that was it. You know, he was not. He wasn't out there on the employment line. He wasn't, you know, doing any of that stuff. He went to the golf course. That was his world. He stayed in it.
- [40:00]
David
So Bob also shared a little bit around his growing up, his family connections with some amazing writers and musicians, and gave us, again, a little bit more insight, which also then corresponds with Neil and gives you a little shape to what the family dynamics were like for Bob growing up. And it's amazing some of the names and people that have come through Bob's life and through the family, and he shares a little bit about that here.
- [40:30]
Bob Young
You know, I grew up with a lot of writers. My father was a writer. He wrote 30 or 40 books that are published in Canada. Our family friends became nationally known when television came along from what they did with television, but also because of their publishing. Pierre Burton, the name you probably know. Early Mortal. I knew all those men, Julian Colwood, Trent Fring, who else? All sorts of people. But I knew them when I was a kid because they were family friends. Robertson Davies from Peterborough, who owned the Peterborough examiner and is considered a serious writer. Literature was what Rob Davies wrote. Rob and Brenda, we used to come for dinner. Mimi and you know, so I. That was the atmosphere when Neil and I were kids. And my mother played all sorts of different kinds of music, popular music, classical music, everything. And my father, my uncle Bob, was a really accomplished musician. His kids could sing harmonies that equal to anything. So we heard all of this stuff, Neil and I, when we were kids. And that was normal. That was normal in our existence. Not all compressed into a weak ring. It was, you know, spread out over years.
- [41:51]
David
So I asked Bob about some footage I've been watching about Mo and he would tee off from like Coke bottles, which apparently he drank a lot of Coke and as well like jumbo sized tees. And he was very, very good at being showy on the golf course. And again, that didn't go over well with some of the traditional golfers. But I wanted to know what was the source of all that fascination with doing something unique in golf and teeing off on these unique things like a Coke bottle, is what Bob said.
- [42:25]
Bob Young
So, you know, my encounters with Mo or, you know, I recognize here's a guy whose artistry is displayed in the way he plays golf, the way he talks about it. He and I had some really interesting discussions. And right near the end of his life at that little course in New Smyrna beach, the municipal club, I explained something that I encountered myself hitting balls and just came to me. I was hitting balls one day and I thought the ball has to get to the apex and then it falls on the target. It doesn't matter what the shot is. That process is the same. Even with a tee shot that has a low trajectory, there's a place where it starts to descend and you see the whole thing. Anyhow, I said to Mo is that I just figured something out. Well, I explained it to him and he said, what's that? And I said, well, you know, you can find. He was also using what I suggested, which was put the ball at the target, look up the air and find the apex. Your eyes from backlog, nearly inhale the shot, mentally hit it immediately. Don't stand there and wonder what you're doing. So for some reason, one day I thought, I'm going to balance myself for the apex fall line. Because the real target is the apex. So I set my balance up. I could feel it in my feet and legs. I'm turning away my. The muscles in my left leg and the line of balance up through my left heel. We're recognizing the apex fall line. So when I turn my left, I'm right handed player. When I turn my left again, the muscles on the inside of my leg, what I was feeling was the apex fall line. And in my right leg I knew where the end of the orbit of the swing was. So the sweet spot of the club. I mean we weren't swinging the club pit, we were swinging the sweet spot in the club pit. That's what's in the mind. The club's this big, I can see it, the sweet spot. You feel it. And you were evolved. The revolving action constituted a wind up and release. Imagine the ball stuck on the face of the club, the one that's sitting in front of you, and you're gonna sling it into the flight line that you created. So I said to Mo, I'm balancing for the apex fall line. I said, the ball's going farther and it's easier for me. He says, that's very interesting. So away he goes that wherever he would tight his fell to the Royal Oak Golf Club. The PGA owned in those days, a cpga. A couple of days later he showed up and he said, I gotta show you this. So we went up to the practice railway with a pale of range balls which he very seldom hit because they're not as good as, you know, bag full of new Titleists, obviously. But he hit every. He always hit straight shots from where the ball was straight. That what's wrong with breaking save nothing's wrong with great. So that day he hit a whole range of clubs in the bag. All different trajectories, fades, draws, whatever with any club he wanted. But he was balanced for the apex fall line of the shot. And then he looked at me and he said, all my life wrong. And I, and I looked at him, I said, you're not wrong. I never thought of it that way or I would have said something to you and. But I understood what he was saying. I didn't know you weren't wrong. But what he was saying was I didn't have a complete picture. Now he figured the picture was complete or closer to complete. He's always looking for ways to improve and that's what that did. He started to hit the ball better because of the Variety of shots. And when he said, all my life wrong, he always hit the ball straight in at whatever, wherever he wanted it to be. Now you can see a refined way of getting it into a tight corner on the green by causing it to fall down with a fade or a draw or something. That's what he meant when he said, all my life wrong. He just meant I could have done better than just hit it straight. I said, well, hit it crooked then, or whatever. You know, it was an interesting relationship I had with him. I. I go out there hitting balls and quite often get the impression that not far away is curative. Mo Norman is watching what I'm doing or watching what I'm thinking.
- [47:26]
David
I asked Bob what he would think Mo would say about this book and his thoughts on having his legacy captured by Bob. And this was the response from. From Bob, what he thought Moe would think of this great new book.
- [47:41]
Bob Young
I think there's a lot of stuff in there he'd like and, you know, some things that haven't been said before. The odd thing here and there about ball striking. I'll get into it further in the next book that I do because there's more. The source of energy. Basically, we talked. This is in this book. This is a. A minuscule opening of the door into where you can go with this conversation. I said to Mo one day, we're using energy. We can feel energy. We set up a shot. You can feel it. That's energy. So for some reason, I said, look. Look at this planet. The place is amazing. It's got mountains, oceans, atmosphere, and a bunch of people wandering around on it, and trees and whatever, fish. Look at the other planets. None of that's apparently there. Sun shines on the Earth. The Earth revolves around the sun. The energy coming from the sun keeps this place going, including you and me. So he's listening to this, wondering where I'm going with this controversy. He said, yeah, all right. I said, I'm going to mentally reach down and see if I can mentally tune with the center of the Earth, because some part of this place has got to be connected to the sun. And it's through the sun that this energy is radiated that, you know, that we're talking about. So that's what I did. So I don't know, sometime later. And it came up again. And he said, what's happening with, you know, that? And I said, well, I feel lighter on my feet. The colors around me look brighter, and everything seems easier to do. And he was watching what I was doing, hitting golf Balls. And I said, that's what I'm doing. I'm doing that. So, I mean, you can take that idea. And we talked about it. He realized that it was actual. I mean, to attach to it. Here's a little item. It's in this book, too. We'd say if you know, on the green, if you play golfer, if anybody plays, they walk on the green. Sometimes they look at a putt and they know they can make it. They hit it and it goes in the cup. No, what happens when that happens? Every once in a while, something happens and the ball goes in the hole. Now, if you can figure out how to recreate that feeling, you can apply it to other things. So we started talking about if you can do that and it works, and it did. You should be able to hit the ball into the hole from the fairway. Might as well aim at the cup. That's where you wanted to go anyhow. We started talking about that. He knew that that's what I was trying to do. It didn't matter where the pin was. I aimed at it. And we're playing the ninth hole at Spruce Creek one day, which is outside of Daytona, a little bit in South Daytona. They're called Holly Hill, maybe. At any rate, I hit a seven iron shot. And I knew. I looked at it, I felt it, I hit it, and I knew that it was perfect. And I said to Mo, I said, maybe that could go in. And it did. It landed in the cup. So that was. And other things happened, you know, with that, with accuracy. And he was saying he was intrigued by it. Every once in a while he'd look at me and he said, nobody knows what you know. I don't know about that. But he said, they all know what you know. I said, well, you know, you know, all these people in the game, what are they talking about? So they're not talking about what you talk about, not what they didn't, you know. And that's why none of that stuff is on. The recorded stuff that you see on. On what's his name's Channel Graves. The Graves Golf Academy. There's none of that stuff on there because he never talked about it. If you look at it, you'll see that that's okay. However we talked about it now that when you start talking about energy, what I just said goes, you know, mull it over. The sun does shine on the Earth. The planet will revolves around it. Energy flows. And all I was trying to do was tap into the energy. So there was more of it. And that's what happened. I could feel something change, but even couldn't, you know, that that's the sun shines on the Earth and the Earth revolves around the sun, that the energy that we're talking about in the sun and the planets were created. Something causes them to be here. That opens a very big door up. What created the sun? It's a good question because there it is, obviously, you know, feel the warmth of the sun. It's an interesting, anyhow, cosmic gulf, the zone that the guys on the PGA Tour talk about getting into. It's a state of mind where everything starts working properly. It comes and goes. But where does it come from? And how do you go back there? You have to have a quiet mind is one way. What is that? How do you create that with everything that's going on? How do you have a quiet mind in the midst of all of this uproar that's happening? I'm glad I made it. It was touch and go. I was. Wasn't sure. This is a difficult place to get to the road system. It was confusing. Anyhow, it's good to speak with you, David.
- [53:50]
David
So I just went on to thank Bob for being on the podcast, thinking this is a great life lesson that we could all apply on the course or off the course. And just thank Bob for his. The amazing things his family has done for Canadian music and literature and to be the fabric of Canada. Just to thank him and for having him on the show was just a joy to have him here with us on the podcast. I also asked Bob what's coming up for him and for Neil and some updates as well. And this is what he said.
- [54:22]
Bob Young
My brother's going to tour. Check his tour schedule out and get back to me if you want to go to one of the shows and I'll make sure that you get tickets for it.
- [54:32]
David
Hang on, Are you hearing this? What?
- [54:34]
Bob Young
Yeah, they'll be playing Toronto Budweiser stage on May 20 and then another show. I think it's in Budweiser stage on 8 July. But check this alone. I've forgotten there's a lot of shows.
- [54:46]
David
Bob, thank you so much for your kindness to be on the podcast offering tickets. Wow, what a great. What a great bonus. Thank you. I really appreciate you being on the show. Thank you for being on Living the Next Chapter. Congratulations on the book and looking forward to having maybe back in the future to talk about more of your writings. And again, thank you so much for being on Living the Next Chapter.
- [55:07]
Bob Young
Okay, good. Well, I enjoyed it. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I will.
- [55:14]
David
Everyone check out all the information in the show notes, please. Go support the book, get the song, do it all. And again, Bob, thank you so much for being part of Living the Next Chapter. Really appreciate you.
- [55:23]
Bob Young
All right, David, thank you.
- [55:31]
David
Hey, well, thank you for listening. It's a new year and we're excited to be releasing even more great episodes of Living the Next Chapter and we want you to come along for the journey. Thank you for being here. If you know of an author that you would love to have featured on the podcast, an author that you enjoy, an author that brings you that excitement that you would just love to hear them interviewed on this podcast. I would love to hear your suggestion for a future guest and some what would be a question or two that you would want us to ask them on your behalf. Go to livinginthenextchapter.com There's a little speak pipe icon there. You can leave me a voice message, tell me who should be on the show and give me some question ideas and I'll use your request and reach out to that author and invite them on and give you full credit for the idea. Livingthenextchapter.com would love to hear your suggestion and thank you for listening. Catch you on the next episode.
- [56:37]
Narrator
Sa.