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- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The way we change Presidents in this country is by voting.

- A quartet is already a jawn, it’s just The New Jawn.

- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- I mean what other country sends comedians over to embedded military to make them feel better.

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

_ It’s not all about memorizing and getting information, it’s what you do with that information.

- (slowly) Start talking right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - Hi, everyone, Steve Adubato.

We kick off the program talking about golf.

All right, you don't have to be a golfer to appreciate this conversation with the great Dr. Bob Rotella.

He's the author of my favorite book of all time, "Golf is Not a Game of Perfect."

But this book, "The Golfer's Mind: Play to Play Great," It's exceptional.

He is one of the nation's top sports psychologists, and I've been reading him for years and still struggling in the bunkers.

Hey, Coach Bob...

Excuse me, Coach and Dr. Bob, good to see you.

- Good to see you, Steve.

- Okay, let me just jump right into this.

So much of what you write is compelling to me.

I teach leadership and coach leadership.

When you talk about confidence, I have confidence doing this, Dr. Bob.

But in a bunker, a sand trap, all of a sudden my mind goes places, and I remember bad shots, and I think, "What happened to my confidence "that I have when I'm on the air?"

What's going on in my mind, Bob Rotella?

(Steve laughing) - Well, I mean, more than likely, there's some doubt, or fear, or indecision.

It's interesting.

I mean, the pros pray for their ball to go in the bunker when they miss the green.

Because to them, the bunker shot is the easiest shot in golf, because all you gotta do is make a swing, and hit the sand, and the ball just comes out, and goes in a hole.

(Bob laughing) If you ask them what they think about, they go, "I just look where I want it to go, "and I hit it, and it goes there."

- What about the rest of us, Bob?

- Well, it's the one shot where you're not trying to hit the ball.

And most people look at the ball instead of looking at the sand.

And the whole idea is you've gotta just make the sand come out.

In other words, if you could just get all the sand an inch or so behind the ball to go as far as you want the ball to go, then it happens.

- All right, let's do this.

- But you're hitting the sand instead of the ball.

- Let's do this, I'm reading from Dr. Bob Rotella's book, "The Golfer's Mind: Play to Play Great."

Can I go through a few of these?

This is in the introduction.

And a couple things I picked up, I want you to react to it.

How about this?

Item number three in your top 10 list of things to be thinking about, frame of mind, "Get out of the results and get into the process".

Bob, I'm obsessed with my handicap, and why it's still 12, 13, 14 after all these years.

The score doesn't matter.

- No, it's... Well, it's an interesting question.

The the score ultimately matters, but the way you get the score is by not adding up your score while you're doing it.

Like, while you're doing this program, I bet you don't try to evaluate how the show's going every second you're doing it.

You're just lost in the interview and doing what you're doing.

And, you know, so we talk about you have to surrender to the outcome in order to get the outcome.

And you can go back.

I mean, I'll give you some examples.

In football, Vince Lombardi had the great quote, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

But when you ask him about it, he said, "I wasn't talking about the score to the game.

"I was talking about making the commitment to winning.

"I was talking about a winning attitude."

If you went to... John Wooden never spoke about outcome.

He just said, you know, "If when the game ended, we were behind, "we simply ran out of time."

That's how he got his players to just take care of executing each play.

Bill Walsh, a great 49ers football coach, the title of one of his books was, "The Score Takes Care of Itself."

And basically we're teaching all the golfers that you have to get lost in a process of... And what that means is, do you know where you want your mind on every shot and putt before the round starts?

And that has to become your mission, your purpose, your goal.

And after the round, I asked players, "Well, did you do what you said you wanted to do "before the round starts?"

If they say they did, I said, "Great, let's go do it again tomorrow."

If they say they didn't, I'd say, "Well, then what distracted you?

"And what became more important "once you got on the golf course "than doing what you know you needed to do "every time you sent over a shot?"

Now, what makes golf hard is there's a lot of potential distraction.

But you don't have to be distracted.

Like, I mean, in the bunker, thinking about leaving it in the bunker or sculling it over the green instead of seeing what you want.

- You know, and by the way, for those of you... We're only gonna be able to touch on Dr. Bob Rotella's brilliant thoughts.

And you don't have to be into golf.

What Bob Rotella talks about is relevant in any arena.

He's also been a sports psychologist and worked with people like LeBron James, basketball, football, sports, not sports.

It doesn't matter, because the principles are the same.

How about this one?

This is a great one.

I wrote...

I have these little rocks.

That sounds ridiculous.

Dr. Bob, this one says "gratitude."

You may ask, why do you have that?

I keep obsessing over having to choose your attitude, because you wrote this, "Know that nothing is gonna bother you "or upset you on the golf course or in life "and You'll be in a great state of mind for every shot."

So, hold on one second.

Go into every experience, Dr. Bob Rotella saying, "Nothing is going to throw me off."

"Nothing."

- Yeah, you know, you said you love that first book, "Golf is Not a Game of Perfect."

The whole idea of the book is golf is not a game of perfect.

It wasn't designed as a game of perfect.

It was designed as a game of mistakes.

Much like every sport is, much like life is, it's not gonna go perfect, the way you'd like it to go.

So, if you really are trying to change golf into a game of perfect, what you're saying is, "I don't like golf as it exists.

"I'm gonna try and change it "into a game that I want it to be."

And the other part of it is, we're all born human, which means we're born flawed, so none of us are gonna be perfect.

None of your opponents are gonna be perfect.

And so, it's like, the more you can accept the game and accept being human, now we can go about playing the game.

And I use the word "play" the game, because that's what you have to get good at, is playing at the game.

And so, I mean, we talk a lot about the fact that even the best players in the world are gonna miss a lot of shots.

And can you accept that even though you've spent hours practicing?

Maybe on the practice range, you hit every ball just the way you wanted to.

And that's the challenge even at the highest level.

What's interesting that most people don't get is, the better you get at golf, the more patience and the more accepting you have to be, because, boy, your expectations go higher and higher, but you're still never gonna master it.

And that's what that's all about, that quote.

- And let me add this.

In a lot of my leadership coaching that I do with my colleague, Mary Gamba, who's also on our production team, we say, "Practice makes progress.

"Practice does not make perfect."

I'm saying what Bob's saying, only differently, except I forget it on the golf course.

Okay, I'm gonna follow up on this.

You ready for this one?

This is beautiful.

"Believe fully in yourself so you can play freely."

Confidence.

Dr. Bob, confidence, does it come and go?

Do we choose it?

Does it only happen when we hit great shots or do great shows, or what comes first, the confidence and success or the success breeding confidence?

Help me on this.

Help all of us.

- Well, think about it.

Everybody has to believe before they can shoot par.

If you don't believe you can shoot par, you'll find a way to mess it up.

You won't let yourself.

Everyone has to believe they can win the Masters before they let themselves win the Masters.

If you don't believe you can win the Masters and you have the lead, you'll find a way to mess it up, you know?

So, confidence always has to come first.

And it's been around forever.

I mean, whether it was Babe Ruth pointing the bat and saying, basically, "If you throw it over the plate, "I'm gonna hit it over the fence."

Or Ted Williams telling the world his dream since he was a little kid was to be a 400 hitter.

So, he allowed himself to do it.

Whether it's Muhammad Ali, whether it's the great golfers of today, I mean, it's always come first.

Now people wanna know, "Well, I wasn't born with it."

Well, very few people are born with it.

If someone tells me they weren't born with it, then I'm gonna tell 'em, "Well, then you're gonna have to develop it."

It's like, "I can't help you."

If someone else happened to... Is it possible that someone was just born confident and stayed confident their whole life?

Yeah, there's probably such people.

But not many people that I've worked with have had that experience, where in every age of their life, in every activity, they were just full of confidence.

So, I mean, the challenge is, can you develop it?

And we call it self-confidence, because it's simply the sum total of all your thoughts you have about yourself.

So, if we had a recording of you, of all of your thoughts about doing your TV show versus all of your thoughts about your bunker play, and we had a computer printout every night, you'd go, "Oh, my God, look at the difference "in the way I think about doing my show "versus the way I think about doing my bunker."

And because everything I teach is we have a free will, and we have to take personal responsibility, and hold ourselves accountable for how we think about different things in our life, that's why we can have confidence in one thing and not in another, because confidence is very task-specific.

But it's self-confidence, because it's your thoughts about you doing certain activities.

- Dr. Bob, before I let you go, I wanna ask you this, you've been at this for years.

You've coached, taught, written about sports, sports psychology.

You've helped so many athletes.

By the way, it's worth reading the story about Sam Snead when Dr. Bob Rotella was just getting into the business, and people were like, "Who's this young guy getting into "talking about sports psychology?"

And Sam Snead, I don't wanna go into the details, but it's in the book, actually gave you the stamp of approval, because he said, "This guy has something worth listening to."

And we're talking about the greatest golfer at the time who had a terrible attitude as you wrote about in the book.

But here's my question to you.

You've been at this for a while.

Why do you still have the passion, the energy to be doing this as you've continued to mature and get better?

- Well, I think the simple answer is I am doing what I love doing.

And the second reason is I get to get up every morning and help people.

Like this afternoon, I have two college golfers coming to spend two days with me.

Tomorrow I'm going over and talking to the University of Virginia lacrosse team that's getting ready for the national championship semifinal.

I mean, I love working with people who have dreams and they're trying to find a way to help themselves achieve their dreams.

And that's what life's about, is having ideas in your head and seeing how far you can go.

- We have that in common too.

If you don't love what you do, I don't know how you do it well.

But Dr. Bob Rotella does it extremely well.

His book, "The Golfer's Mind: Play to Play Great" and my all time favorite, "Golf is Not a Game of Perfect."

Forward by Tom Kite, who actually redesigned the golf course that I play at in over in New Jersey.

The great Tom Kite.

Hey, listen, you honor us, and I'm sorry I talked so much about my own issues on the golf course.

That's not fair to everybody.

But I cannot thank you enough, Dr. Bob Rotella, for joining us.

Thanks, Bob.

- Great being with you, Steve.

Have a great day.

- You've got it.

Let's get out of those bunkers.

Nice and easy.

- I love it.

I can see it now.

- Yeah, we'll be right back after this.

I'm taking my 60 degree out right now.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We're now joined by Dr. Matt Hale, who is associate professor Department of Political Science at Seton Hall University, one of our longtime higher ed partners.

Good to see you, Matt.

- Hey, good to see you too.

- You got it.

Hey, Matt, bunch of things I wanna talk to you about.

First, anti-Semitism.

You understand it, not just from a scholarly point of view.

You're a council member in Highland Park who happens to be Jewish.

Do you see a rise in anti-Semitism?

And how is it manifesting itself?

- You know, one of the things that I think may be under the radar that we're seeing a lot is I feel like I have a lot of friends and a lot of students and a lot of folks who are feeling abandoned, and that's how anti-Semitism is showing, so you're seeing people who you thought were in your corner, who you were in the corner for them, and then, all of a sudden, they disappear.

All of a sudden, they're gone, and, you know, I've heard stories, repeated stories about people who are canceling play dates for kids because, you know, they don't want their kids to play with Zionists and things like that, so this is different than it's been before.

We're, you know, obviously you see incredible rise.

ADL is talking about a 360% increase in anti-Semitic incidents, but it really is sort of, I think, different this time in many respects 'cause it is this core sort of canceling of people who have a belief in Israel, or canceling of people who are, you know, support the state of Israel or Zionism is enough to get you kicked out of your sorority, get you kicked out of your fraternity, or kicked outta your kids' play dates, and that's the sad part, right?

- Shift gears dramatically, Matt.

Why the heck did you write an op-ed piece?

And you know where I'm going with this.

There's no easy segue here, so Matt Hale wrote a piece, "EVs Tear Up N.J.

Roads.

"They Should Pay Their Fair Share to Fix Them."

What's the issue with EVs?

And what does it have to do with the Transportation Trust Fund, which funds transportation infrastructure projects in New Jersey?

What's this about?

- So, you know, up until the latest reauthorization, which just happened, electric vehicles didn't pay anything- - Reauthorization of the Transportation Trust Fund.

- Yeah, into the reauthorization of the Transportation Trust Fund, EVs and vehicle owners didn't pay anything into it, so there was no fee for them.

They didn't pay at the pump, and so there was...

I just felt that there was a need to sort of recognize that, yes, EVs are fantastic.

We should encourage them, but at the same time, how those bills fall on folks I think is important, so if you have a, you're a plumber, and you need a big truck to make that happen, you're not gonna get an EV, and you're gonna pay higher taxes in Transportation Trust Fund, higher gas taxes, and the person who has a Tesla is not gonna pay them, so it's not that EVs are a bad idea.

It's not that they don't, you know, help the environment, climate crisis.

It's just the fact that they should start paying their fair share for the roads that they use.

- Put this in perspective.

Professor Hale's talking about the Transportation Trust Fund, EVs, and what they should pay or not.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but in 1985, as a very, very young member of the state legislature, I voted for the original authorization of the Transportation Trust Fund, and trust me, EVs were not in the legislation and were not considered.

I don't think anyone thought...

It did have to evolve and adapt.

- And that's the most important thing is we have to evolve and adapt.

As these new technologies come on, I think it's important that everybody pays their fair share for the things everybody uses: roads and bridges.

- You also wrote a piece.

You call it "New Jersey's Toy Story Moment," so here's the deal.

You have said, "New Jersey politics is special, "and not just because of how our ballots are constructed."

We've done a lot of programming on the party line, and it's not gonna... (clears throat) Judge made a decision about that, so there'll no longer be a party line, on the Democratic side, at least.

What makes New Jersey politics so special, Professor Hale?

- So the part that I think is special and has been special about New Jersey politics is that we still have strong parties, both on the Republican and the Democratic side.

Compared to nationally, New Jersey parties actually have a much greater and more significant role in how things get done.

Parties breed moderation.

The people who get the nod in the party, either Democrat or Republican, they're not far left or far right.

They're people who are generally in the middle, and I think that's where most of New Jersey folks are.

The line is a very powerful tool for parties to help enforce that.

They help parties enforce that moderation.

My worry is that as this develops, you know, over the next four or five years, we're gonna see much more of candidates running without the party, and they're gonna be farther to the left and farther to the right and the sort of same kind of gridlock that we see in Washington D.C. where literally nothing can get done because partisan differences may come to New Jersey.

That may or may not happen, but that's something that I think we oughta consider.

- Hold on, Matt.

You're saying that getting rid of the party line, which many folks, including a lot of political reformers have said, "There's just a few folks, "who disproportionately are men, white men, "who make decisions about things.

"That's anti-democratic, and we need more people involved.

"We need to make it easier for people to run."

You're saying, "Wait a minute.

"That may be true, "but it's dangerous to do away "with the party line because..." 'cause, Matt, I mean, here's the argument I would have in response to that or the question.

If someone's a candidate too far to the left, too far to the right, if they didn't get enough votes, they wouldn't win.

- So my point of the article is that one of the things that we can expect to happen is that independent money, whether it's self-funded or whether it's money that is, you know, raised nationally, right?

You're gonna be able to raise... Those types of candidates are gonna be a lot more likely to win, to be able to win outside the infrastructure, so you could have candidates with a lot of money who can self-fund that are gonna just ignore all of the party apparatus or try and ignore it, and they could win that way.

You're gonna have people in low turnout elections, right?

Who might strike a nerve at a local level that will be able to upset, you know, someone who has been on the line.

I'm not saying that it's the worst thing in the world.

I'm saying that there are some downsides, sort of just like the Transportation Trust Fund.

As we're thinking about moving forward, as we're thinking about making things better, we have to recognize that it's not a light switch.

We're also, we're not gonna save democracy by getting rid of the line or keeping it.

We're not gonna save the planet by getting rid of EVs or making them pay more.

We have to make sure that as we're making policy decisions, we're confronting both the costs and benefits in these issues, and there are costs and benefits in every issue.

- We're taping this program on the 29th of May.

It's a significant day because a jury in New York is making a decision, so ironically, we're taping today in the Trump, former President Trump hush money case, so that being said, it's either guilty, not guilty, or hung jury.

We don't know, and we're not gonna try to report the news.

That's not what it's about.

What, in any way, do you believe this verdict, whatever it is, will potentially have an impact on, not just the presidential race, but, frankly, the future of our small-d democratic society?

This is a former president being charged, regardless of how it plays out, with 34 felonies.

That's significant regardless of what the verdict is.

- Absolutely, and, you know, there will be a certain percentage of people who, no matter what the guilty verdict is, still are gonna vote for Trump.

There'll be people who would never vote for Trump no matter what.

I think one of the things that this case brings up, though, is we're struggling with our institutions right now, the institutions of media, the institution of university, the institution of government, the institution of parties.

All of the institutions that we have trusted and relied on, people are seemingly more and more willing to throw them out the window, to say, "We need to scrap the existing system "and go to something new," and I think that's a danger.

If you're willing- - Is democracy in danger?

Sorry, Matt.

Is democracy in danger?

- I absolutely think...

I think you can't have a strong democracy without strong institutions, and our institutions are getting weaker and weaker every day.

You need trust in institutions in order for democracy to work, and we are, again and again, losing trust in those institutions and wanting to throw them out the window, and that's the danger that democracy faces.

- But what about all those people who believe the system doesn't work and that we should need to, we should, quote, "Throw the whole thing out "and blow it up and start over."

People believe that.

Many people believe that.

- Absolutely.

There are a lot of people who believe that.

You know, we have a system that allows you to change the system from within, to go and to work with people who agree with you, who you wanna fight with, no matter what your point of view is, no matter where you're coming from, we have the ability for people to get involved in a system, to work in a system, and to make changes in that system, and it doesn't happen overnight.

It doesn't happen like TikTok.

It happens over decades, over time, and it feels to me that we often don't wanna spend that amount of time in order to make things better.

Clearly, today is better than it used to be, in so many different ways, except for the fact that our institutions are no longer seen as a place where we can come together, collaborate, and solve problems.

- I may also say, and it's not editorializing, and people who disagree with this, I'm not sure why.

It also cannot happen through political violence.

- Absolutely not.

There is no- - Or overthrowing the government, or an insurrection, whatever.

There is no place for that, and there also, there's no place for political hatred of those who disagree with you.

I can't even believe that's a controversial point of view with some, Matt.

- So, you know, here's- - Few seconds left.

Go ahead.

- Here might be a story is I was at a graduation the other day, and the Secretary of the Navy was commissioning new ROTC officers, and there were protesters who were protesting the war in Gaza, and they came towards the stage.

They stopped in the middle, about the 50-yard line of this.

The Secretary of the Navy said, "The people that I am about to give the the oath to, "the people in this ROTC are taking this oath "to protect and defend whatever you wanna say "in the back of the room.

"Whatever you wanna say, "they're there to protect and defend.

"People who are in the front lines are protecting the people "to say what they want in the back lines."

That's what democracy is about.

That is what democracy stands for is that you have institutions that protect your right and your freedom, and if we don't have those, we don't have a democracy.

- Thank you, Matt.

It's been too long since we've had you.

Will not be this long again because what you share is significant, and people can decide for themselves, but your voice is important.

Thank you, Professor Hale.

- Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato.

That's Professor Matt Hale.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by New Jersey Sharing Network.

Johnson & Johnson.

Holy Name.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Wells Fargo.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

NJM Insurance Group.

The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

And by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Working for a more a healthier, more equitable New Jersey.

And by ROI-NJ.

- (Narration) Healing is never just about medicine and technology.

It has to go further than that.

It has to combine science with humanity.

It has to be our best medicine, combined with large doses of empathy, kindness, dignity and respect.

It has to be delivered by people who love what they do and who they do it for.

Holy Name.

Great medicine, soul purpose.