No More Lies

Nobody gets good at golf alone. Brian Manzella (Golf Digest's #14-ranked teacher in America) and Sam Osborne (former touring pro) name the people who got them here: the books, the better players who never gave them a tip, the stranger on a putting green, the former prizefighter who tended the pin on Brian's first 79, and the famous names who put in a word. Stories include Simon Griffiths at Wentworth, Joe Cook and Johnny Scurich at City Park, Ernie Makepeace, Walter Pryor, Carl Poche and Paul Azinger's college team, the Sea Island playoff, Monty, Bill Strausbaugh and Paul Marchand at the 1992 Teaching Summit, and Peter Fowler telling a kid to quit school. The takeaway: you don't improve in a straight line, you need people, and being nice is not that hard. Watch the video version on YouTube at @funnelgolfx. Be your own coach. Chapters 0:00 Cold open 0:42 Who got us here 1:31 Sam's first golf books: Leadbetter and Henry Cotton 7:21 Simon Griffiths: the best lesson was never a lesson 10:42 Brian's cousin, Don Horn and Street & Smith's 15:20 Reading Golf Digest cover to cover 18:09 City Park, Gary Schultz and Al Juhl 20:20 Joe Cook, Johnny Scurich and the first 79 30:52 Golf is hard: you need things to happen 32:19 Sam at 17: the Mail on Sunday and the Sea Island playoff 37:14 Brian at 15: shooting 67 and looking for a game 39:52 Ernie Makepeace and the putting green invite 42:42 Walter Pryor, Jimmy Cole and the money games 43:14 Carl Poche and Paul Azinger's college team 47:54 Walter Pryor's Tommy Moore advice 49:45 Famous people who helped: Monty 52:51 The Teaching Summit: Bill Strausbaugh and Paul Marchand 56:57 Being nice is not that hard 57:54 Peter Fowler and the closer

This week's big lie: the pursuit of compression is great for your golf game. Brian Manzella, Golf Digest's #14-ranked teacher in America, and Sam Osborne, former touring pro, both chased it, both got worse, and both came back. They cover what compression actually is (a delivery number, not a hand position), what Tiger meant about divots, the Foley years, why Hogan and Nicklaus got better with less forward lean, the selective picture posters, and what The Golfing Machine really says about the flat left wrist. Plus the horror stories: the pitching yips, 14 degrees down, and Brian's decade of going backwards. 0:00 No More Lies Ep. 15: Compression 1:46 This week's big lie: chasing compression helps your game 2:42 Ben Doyle, shiny divots, and the Manzella Forum days 3:47 The first time we heard the word compression 8:53 Homer Kelly, The Golfing Machine, and smash factor 11:51 Ben Doyle rebuilds Brian's swing 14:49 What compression actually is: dynamic loft minus angle of attack 16:10 Sam's friends who chased it and did not get better 18:01 Force across the shaft and tour quality impact 19:57 McIlroy vs the 3 wood: the ball does not know where your hands are 22:40 How little forward lean club champions really have 25:01 Faldo, Leadbetter, and Greg Norman's no-divot week 26:52 What Tiger meant when he told Scheffler he does not take divots 28:34 Confessions of a Former Flipper 31:37 Hogan and Nicklaus got better with less forward lean 32:21 How the compression craze started 33:25 The camera in your pocket epidemic 34:53 Selective picture posters, named 37:02 What The Golfing Machine says about the line of compression 39:22 Flat left wrist, not arched 41:35 Get on Trackman: you need more loft than you think 43:05 The low shot lie: David Toms finished with his hands over his head 44:57 Force across the shaft on Tour: Masters 1975 vs 2026 47:10 Are today's players better ball strikers? 49:27 Should regular golfers lean the shaft? 51:38 Who actually needs more forward lean and how to learn it 52:23 Horror stories: Tiger, Foley, and the pitching yips 53:25 Michael Jacobs hits 14 degrees down 55:00 Brian got worse every year until he stopped compressing 57:57 Sam copies Greg Norman's finish and the game gets easy 59:14 Steve Elkington on Trackman 62:00 The moral: compression is a club delivery specification 64:14 The flattest left wrist in golf New episodes every Monday. Follow @funnelgolfx everywhere. Be your own coach.

There is no test, no license, and no minimum standard to call yourself a golf teacher. This week Brian Manzella (Golf Digest's #14-ranked teacher in America) and former touring pro Sam Osborne dig into the most unregulated profession in sports: why some of the world's most famous instructors were never in the PGA of America, how club pros really earned a living 50 years ago, what an actual teaching certification could look like, and why the average teacher stays under-informed in an era when a bot can answer any question. Also on the tee: the "you're toast" backswing myth, Bobby Jones vs. Scottie Scheffler, the Ishkabibble swing, and the George Gankas Golf Channel story. Chapters 0:00 Intro: Golf Teachers Are Gonna Hate This One 2:19 Why Golf Instructors Disagree So Much 5:01 Bobby Jones vs Scottie Scheffler: The Backswing Test 6:19 No License Required: How Anyone Can Teach Golf 10:12 The You're Toast Backswing Myth 14:38 Why the Average Golf Teacher Is Under-Informed 16:35 What Butch Harmon Gets Right 19:09 Sam and Brian on Playing for a Living 25:17 How Golf Pros Made Money 50 Years Ago 32:01 A Working-Class Dad and a Golf Teaching Career 36:49 The PGA of America and Golf Instruction 42:39 Brian's Pilot Program: Certify the Teachers 46:24 Butch Harmon, Joe Mayo, Chris Como: Not in the PGA 52:57 The Ishkabibble Swing 54:58 The George Gankas Golf Channel Story 58:56 Golf Improvement Is Like Weight Loss New episodes every Monday. Golf without the spin. Be your own coach.

Brian Manzella, Golf Digest's #14-ranked teacher in America, and former touring pro Sam Osborne take apart the most persistent swing trend of the last decade: laying the club down. Where it hatched, who it might actually help, why the physics behind it doesn't hold up, and Brian's flat answer to whether anyone should try to shallow the shaft on the downswing. Along the way: Hogan's real secret, the Ben Doyle flat left wrist confession, arch wrists jumping from 10% of golfers to 50%, and the 2D camera illusion that fools almost everyone. Watch the full video episode on YouTube: @funnelgolfx Chapters 0:00 Cold open 1:36 Today's topic: misguided swing ideas 3:34 The Leadbetter and Faldo shallowing era 7:48 Three categories: shallowing, laying down, laid off 14:00 Ben Hogan's real secret 16:23 How fixing slicers created laid-off swings 25:52 The laydown pattern, step by step 38:05 Confessions of a Former Flipper 42:00 Arch wrists: 10% then, 50% now 51:33 You cannot backward waggle IN a downswing 58:33 The motorboat analogy, debunked 68:08 The verdict: never TRY TO shallow the shaft

Brian and Sam continue the top 100 golf swings of all time, covering Annika Sorenstam, Calvin Peete, Tom Watson, Louis Oosthuizen, Greg Norman's 1986 swing, Gene Littler, Davis Love III, and Ernie Els. Brian makes the case that Oosthuizen, not Hogan, is the swing most golfers should copy, tells the story of quietly helping Robert Rock in 2019, and Sam remembers his Team Faldo days with a 13-year-old Rory McIlroy. The episode closes with a tease: the player at #30 hurt his hip in 1964, never swung the same way again, and may have the best hip action ever recorded. He gets the full treatment next week. 0:00 Intro 1:17 The Top 100 Swings List Strikes a Nerve 2:23 The Orange County National Wrist Experiment 5:55 Why Brian's List Changes: Bobby Jones and Fred Couples 7:41 Helping Robert Rock and the Players Brian Never Named 12:28 Calvin Peete: The Best Ball Striker Nobody Copies 16:04 What Makes a Swing Great: Your Best Shot vs. Your Worst 18:21 Calvin Peete's 1,500 Balls a Day 23:05 Annika Sorenstam at #22 26:02 Kevin Shields, Lindsay Newman, and the Mike Hebron Lesson 28:43 Nick Faldo 1989 and Sam's Team Faldo Years 38:53 Tom Watson, "The Secret," and the Remade Swing 44:12 Louis Oosthuizen at #25: The Swing Most Golfers Should Copy 48:57 Greg Norman 1986 53:10 Gene Littler 1959 54:12 Davis Love III 1992 56:47 Ernie Els 2004 59:41 The Mystery Swing at #30

Brian Manzella and Sam Osborne continue the book series by comparing Claude's top 50 most influential golf instruction books against Grok's top 20, focusing on the titles the two lists disagree on. Along the way: Tommy Armour's hands-first gospel, Bobby Jones as a writer, Harry Vardon, Seymour Dunn's geometry, the flip-book that taught Ben Doyle, Alex Morrison's footwork revolution and the banked right heel in early Hogan and Snead film, the pre-accident Hogan sequences in Power Golf, and the swing science shelf from David Williams to Mark Broadie's Every Shot Counts. The strongest take of the episode: John Jacobs' Practical Golf belongs in any legitimate top 10, and Sam has the Zane Scotland story to prove it. Two tweaks from Jacobs turned a struggling Challenge Tour player into a European Tour card holder in a matter of weeks. Coming soon: the remaining 25 books, 80 more swings from the greatest swings list, and the Brian Manzella Teacher Hall of Fame episode before Christmas. Be your own coach.

The greatest golf swings of all time, positions 11 through 20. Bobby Jones, Harry Vardon, Steve Elkington, David Toms, Peter Thomson, Tom Weiskopf, Ian Woosnam, Nick Price, Sergio Garcia, and Scottie Scheffler. Tiger Woods called one of these players the best ball-striker he ever saw. Brian worked with another one during the 2012 FedEx Cup and watched him hit it perfect for weeks at a time. And a witness once saw Harry Vardon hit drivers at a tarp for an hour without missing the center. Brian Manzella, Golf Digest's #14-ranked teacher in America, and former touring pro Sam Osborne break down what made each swing great, which rankings will draw pushback, and why Sergio Garcia is the unintentional model for Brian's entire teaching philosophy. Calvin Peete fans: he's on the next list episode. New episodes every Monday. Ep. 10. Be your own coach.

Brian Manzella and Sam Osborne break down everything that happened at The Open Championship, and everything golf media won't say about it. Ryan Fox came from outside the top 50 in the world to beat Sam Burns down the stretch, taking two brutal breaks on 15 and 17 without so much as a raised eyebrow. TV gave Fox credit for staying cool. What nobody mentioned is that Sam Burns has now missed the putts that mattered the last couple of times he had a chance to win a major. That's the story the broadcast skipped. Then the big one: Bryson DeChambeau's two-stroke penalty for improving his lie in the second round. Brian and Sam agree the ruling was correct. They also agree it's a double standard, because this happens on tour constantly and only gets called when the cameras and the crowds are on you. From Dustin Johnson in 2019 at Royal Portrush and this year with Wyndham Clark at Shinnecock to the questions around Tiger, the history here is longer than the broadcast wants to admit. Plus: Rory McIlroy says he doesn't care about his legacy, and neither host is buying it. Why Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns seem allergic to stardom. How $100 million in the bank changed player motivation compared to the Nicklaus and Watson era. And a full teardown of NBC and Peacock's Open coverage: Adam Scott and Russell Henley finished ninth and barely got a single shot on air, Kevin Kisner has been neutered by producers, and Johnny Miller remains the gold standard nobody will let anyone copy. Sam also owns up to his own tournament meltdown, including back-to-back double and triple bogey, and teases the side saddle putting conversation coming in a future episode. Next up on No More Lies: the second ten of the most influential golf books of all time, and the next installment of the top 100 golf swings. No More Lies is golf without the spin. Two veterans saying what golf media won't. Be your own coach.

Brian Manzella has stood next to more great ball strikers than almost anyone alive. He watched Jack Nicklaus play 600 holes. He sat next to Lee Trevino. He watched Byron Nelson hit the whole bag. He was at Valhalla for prime Tiger. So when he ranks the greatest golf swings of all time, it is not a listicle. It is a verdict from someone who was actually there. In this episode Brian unveils the 12th edition of his Top 100 Golf Swings of All Time, and he and Sam Osborne break down the top 10 one by one. Sam had never seen the list, so every reaction is live and unscripted. They cover Ben Hogan at No. 1, why the 2005 Tiger swing edged out 2000, Sam Snead's impossibly quiet head, the deliberate genius of Jack Nicklaus's flying right elbow, Johnny Miller's weak grip and laser irons, and the pick nobody sees coming at No. 6. Plus the argument that ties the whole list together: course management is worthless if you cannot actually hit the shot. The full top 10: Hogan, Woods, Snead, Nicklaus, Miller, Couples, Wright, Trevino, Nelson, McIlroy. Brian Manzella is Golf Digest's #14-ranked teacher in America. Sam Osborne is a former touring pro. Together they give you golf history the way it actually happened, with no spin. Full video on YouTube at @funnelgolfx. New episodes of No More Lies every Monday.

We asked AI to rank the 20 most influential golf instruction books in history. Then we tore the list apart. Brian Manzella, Golf Digest's #14-ranked teacher in America, and former touring pro Sam Osborne react to Grok's top 10: Harvey Penick's Little Red Book, Ben Hogan's Five Lessons, The Golfing Machine, Bob Rotella, Dave Pelz, Mark Broadie and more. In this episode: Why Hogan's "Five Lessons" actually contains eight fundamentals, and why the claim that it ruins slicers is baloney. The one grip picture in the book Brian says you should not copy. The Golfing Machine: the hardest book to find, the worst-written book on the list, and still the most influential book in golf instruction today. It's not close. The putting setup that had Brian rolling everything in from eight feet (a Pelz putting track and a training aid called The Plip, if you can find one on eBay). How Bob Rotella invented the tour mental coach, how Mark Broadie's strokes gained proved the real separator between golfers is the 200-yard shot, and the one book Grok left off the list entirely that belongs in the top ten. New episodes of No More Lies every Monday. Subscribe and follow Funnel Golf: @funnelgolfx on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Youtube, and X. Be your own coach.

Golf instruction has a war going on, and this week Brian and Sam walk straight into it. Brian Manzella (Golf Digest's #14-ranked teacher in America) and Sam Osborne (former touring pro) trace Stack & Tilt back to its real roots: Homer Kelley's The Golfing Machine, Mac O'Grady's MORAD, and the symposiums that shaped a generation of teachers. Sam shares what happened when he actually tried the method as a tour player, and Brian makes the case for why no single system will ever take over golf, backed by GEARS data sitting right there in the room. Also in this episode: Brian brings TrackMan proof that at 64 he can still get it out there (103.9 mph club head, 155.4 ball speed), and the guys debate whether distance is something you're born with. Sam checks in from the Ray Fisher amateur in Wisconsin and explains what it's really like teeing it up against college kids half his age, plus his honest take on whether ex-pros getting amateur status back is fair. On the pro side: why Brian and Sam think the ball rollback died under Tour pressure, what the two-tier PGA Tour actually means for players (and the hometown-event problem nobody's talking about), and Sam's verdict on the Shinnecock setup from a guy who's played a U.S. Open himself. No gurus. No systems. No spin. New episodes every week. Subscribe so you don't miss one.

Bryson DeChambeau went to the press and said AI helped fix his golf swing, name-dropping Google Gemini and tossing out terms like alpha torque, gamma torque, and passive squaring. Brian Manzella and Sam Osborne were not buying it. In Episode 5 of No More Lies, the two veterans break down Bryson's AI press conference line by line: what he got right, what he got wrong, and why the idea of "passive squaring" does not survive contact with the actual physics. Brian explains real 6D club kinetics. Then it gets bigger. The guys make the case that AI and swing apps will wipe out the middle tier of golf instruction within five years, why the top and the bottom of the market survive, and what that means for anyone teaching the game. Plus the gutting of Sports Illustrated's golf desk, why golf magazines always ducked the hard instruction stories, and a Jack Nicklaus equipment story that will stop you cold. Golf without the spin. Two veterans saying what golf media won't. Hosted by Brian Manzella, Golf Digest's #14-ranked teacher in America, and Sam Osborne, former touring pro. New episodes weekly.

Brian Manzella and Sam Osborne take on the loudest fight in golf: the distance debate. Both land on the same side, then explain why the people pushing hardest against a rollback are the ones with the most money on the line. In Episode 4: Why the pro game has outgrown its own golf courses The case that a shorter, spinnier ball brings real skill back (long irons into par 4s again) Why the "rolled-back ball still goes 375" story is marketing, not fact A pilot program that would settle the whole argument with real data instead of noise The origin story: the D-plane video, the trip to Ping, Dr. Kwon's pressure plates, and the night Brandel Chamblee bet he could read TrackMan numbers off the ball, a dollar a ball No gurus. No patented systems. Two veterans saying what golf media won't. New episodes every Monday. Watch, then tell us where we're wrong in the comments. #golfpodcast

Before YouTube. Before Instagram. Before anyone was farming golf tips for engagement, the real arguments happened on message boards at 2am. Brian Manzella was there for all of it. In this episode, Brian and Sam trace the strange, scrappy history of golf instruction online, from a clunky Macintosh in 1996 to the forum that genuinely changed how the game gets taught. What's inside: Why Brian got banned from forum after forum for one heretical idea: the clubface, not your path, is what makes you slice The six-page Teacher of the Year application he dropped into a thread to settle the credentials argument (it got him banned again) The David Toms story at English Turn: a towel, a hurdle drill, and a mishit that rolled straight through David Duval's legs on the next bay. Toms went on to lap the field at Quail Hollow How Brian built his own forum and watched it hit 30,000 members Sam discovering the whole thing from across the pond as "Slammin' Sam 2" The Golfing Machine wars, the Atlanta school that fell apart the same week as Katrina, and why the best ideas usually won anyway. No gurus. No patented systems. Just two guys who lived inside the game telling you how it actually went down. New episodes every week.

In Episode 2 of No More Lies, Brian Manzella and Sam Osborne open up the most contentious story in modern golf instruction: the Alpha War. Manzella traces 12 years of golf science, from the collapse of the Golfing Machine to the rise of club kinetics and Jacobs 3D, and names the names most teachers won't. Along the way: how the work rebuilt Padraig Harrington's career, why the PGA Tour looked like "a bunch of babies" during the LIV era, the gutting of Q School, and a broadcast booth that refuses to tell you what is actually happening in a golf swing.

Two veterans. Decades inside the game. Done biting their tongues. This is Episode 1 of NO MORE LIES. Welcome to the flagship talk show of Funnel Golf. With conversations about instruction, the teaching industry, the professional game, and the game at large—covering the parts of this industry nobody else is willing to say out loud. In Episode 1, we introduce ourselves, lay out why we’re doing this, and start exactly where you’d expect: with the truth. 🎙️ HOSTED BY Brian Manzella – Golf Digest’s 14th-ranked Teacher in America and Top 100 Golf Magazine Teacher since 2010, with over 44 years of teaching experience from beginners to the pro game. Sam Osborne – Former touring pro, hand-picked as a junior by Bernard Gallacher for exclusive membership to the prestigious Wentworth Club, with 12 years as a pro before turning the page on the game he thought he knew.