Ultimate springtime golf fitness tips for "real" golfers

By Tim McDonald,
National Golf Editor

For those of you unfortunate enough to live in the North, you must be salivating at the thought of the spring golf season.

Hold on, Tiger. You ain't the man you used to be. You can't just jump up and go straight to the golf course after a long winter of sloth and mold.

Now, you will find any number of charlatans willing to sell you their total golf fitness regimens. These sleazoids always assume you're a golfer interested in a cleaner, healthier way of living and golfing. I've seen you out on the course, and I know that's not the sort of thing you're "into."

So here is my total golf fitness regimen for the "real" golfer:

• For God's sake, you have to strengthen your core! This involves eating really hard food, like jawbreakers. Eat a bag of those and have your neighbor punch you in the gut to see if your core is all it can be.

Options: Month-old fudge, Purina Dog Chow, pine bark.

• You also have to really work your obliques, I mean really work the hell out of them. Here's the perfect exercise for that. Lie flat on your back with knees bent slightly wider than your hips. If you have really fat hips, you're either going to have to really stretch your knees like in a cartoon, like The Elastic Man from India, or just skip this exercise. In fact, if you have really fat hips, just skip playing golf, nobody wants to see you out on the course.

Now, you slim-hipped people reach your hands to the ceiling like you're crying out for the Lord Jesus Christ to spare you from your miserable existence. You can hold light hand-weights, or not. What do I care? Lift your head and chest toward the ceiling and rotate to reach both hands just outside of your fat, right knee. Repeat on the left side. Now, take a breather. Ask Christ for forgiveness.

• Breathing exercises: Breathing properly and deeply is critical, especially for those tense moments on the course when normally you would start crying.
This deep-breathing exercise involves attending your local adult movie house, or calling up one of those sites on your Internet browser. Follow your instincts. It's either that or follow mine, and then you're looking at jail time.
• Horizontal abduction/adduction: I can't give you much help here, because I always get "horizontal" confused with "vertical," and I have no idea what adduction is. Who came up with that word, anyway? It's a stupid word and should be eliminated from the English language, if it's even English.

• Standing hip rotation: Don't do this. It makes you look like a girl.

• Alcohol fitness: How many times have you lost $2 Nassaus because while you were getting hamboned, your playing partners were just holding up that bottle of Jack Black pretending to drink?

Well, no need to waste good liquor. You can still drink and maintain your competitive edge. You just need to build up a tolerance. Stand upright in a dark closet, with a wide stance, and suck it down. Keep drinking until your wife leaves you.

• Aerobics: Ha! Don't make me laugh. This is golf!

• Putting: Don't bother to practice putting. Putting in golf is overrated. I play golf maybe 200 times a year and I've yet to meet anyone who can putt. You either make it or you don't. If you miss, just keep putting until the ball goes in the hole. Simple.

• Seniors: As we age, our bodies react differently, so seniors must prepare for golf differently than young punks. An important thing to remember is that there is an inverse relationship of increased ear hair to laughably short drives off the tee.

So keep those ear hairs trim and neat. If you're proud of your thick mane of ear hair, don't sweat it. If you're short off the tee, you're probably small in other areas, and I think you know what I'm talking about.

• Excuses: A healthy psychological outlook is a must for Better Golf. If you can convince yourself that the snap hook you hit into the weeds over there is not your doing at all, you'll retain the confidence needed to excel in the game.

The first time you smack one of your all-too-typical lousy shots, turn to your playing partner and snarl," "Will you stop that!" Look at him, looking all hurt and everything. Who would have thought golf fitness could be so much fun?

• Torque development in the downswing: This is so important, I can barely contain myself. This is vital to any golfer who has ever wanted to improve his score. You could even say it is absolutely critical in terms of reaching your full potential as a golfer and knowing what it is to be truly human.

• Alignment and posture: Face the target squarely and stand erect, with your rump jutting out slightly. Feels a little silly, doesn't it? Can you think of another situation in life where you would position yourself in such an odd manner? I can't.

Seeing ourselves through other eyes

No matter what group you’re in, you don’t see what’s going on. We all get too insular, whether it’s our business, our church or our golf group. Sometimes we need to be reminded of the values of our efforts.

It was interesting to be at last month’s Jacksonville Area GA meeting. The speaker was Alan Verlander, the athletics director at Jacksonville University. He’s accomplished at his trade and you don’t have to be much of a sports fan to know that JU is back in the news. The school’s athletic department seems to have vanished for a couple of decades and the new president, Kerry Romesburg, made a great decision when he brought Alan home. He grew up here, is a member of a wonderful and civic-minded family, and has made the school’s athletic programs reappear.

He’s also a good golfer but somehow his busy life left out attending a JAGA meeting. Certainly, that’s something an AD should do but it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the number of sports-related meetings that are available.

Anyway, he was there, and it was easy to tell that he was impressed.

It was one of those meetings where everything went right. Being at Marsh Landing gets you off to a great start, but also having 70 or so people, most of them in a white JAGA director’s shirt. The introductions were appropriate for a business session and the orders of business were properly handled.

Minutes were approved, the treasurer’s report was detailed. There was a report of successful tournaments and plans of tournaments to come. There was a report of the association’s plans for the 2009 year.

The scholarship chairman spoke of the upcoming school year and said he expected JAGA to have 31 students receiving $1,500 a semester. He read a letter from a scholarship recipient, telling how honored she was to be a JAGA scholar. She sent a brochure about her school’s golf program and the chairman held it up: Princeton.

Verlander was obviously — and “obviously” may not be strong enough — impressed with what he was hearing. He was in a room full of people who were attentive to the proceedings, and who certainly understood what was taking place.

The scholarship chairman asked if there were any donations and the parade started. One club had a check for $2,150, another for $1,000, another for $175 ... several more proudly telling the story of their club, and how they raised money to help the fund. The final donation topped them all: $9,695 from Sawgrass, and the guy with the check almost apologized that it wasn’t quite as much as last year.

Through it all, Verlander watched and his expression told you what was going through his mind: who are these people and why didn’t I know about them?

When it came his time to speak, he diverted from his main topic (JU) to talk about his newfound topic (JAGA.)

“I’m embarrassed to stand here and say that I didn’t know all that you do,” he said. “You have a great story to tell. What I've heard this morning tells me that you’re doing everything you can to change the world.

“I use that phrase ‘change the world’ a lot, and people think, ‘Change the world? How can I change the world?’ Well, you can. You may not be able to change the globe, but what you’re doing is help change the world around you. You have some control of this area, and you’re doing what you can.”

He went on, speaking about a person’s “circle of influence” and the fact that one meaning of giving back is “that you learn a lot about yourself.”

It was more than the scholarship money.

“The quality of the people in this room and the work you’re doing tells me that you’re serving the community,” he said. “So many people here play golf, and you’re helping make their lives better by promoting the game the way that you’re promoting it.”

It was an eloquent speech and it turned the place around: instead of Verlander being impressed with the organization, suddenly the organization saw something about itself. An outsider had come into the box and, speaking from the heart, related the effects and the success of their mission.

Wouldn’t it be great if we all got a shot of confidence like that? Wouldn’t it help your business, or club, or church, or your neighborhood to hear a prominent person tell you about your success?

I know it would. All you had to see were the faces of the people in that room. Someone had just told them that their labor of love was a mission of importance.

We all need a pep talk like that.

— Jim Bailey is president of Bailey Publishing & Communications Inc. and publisher of the Golf News. He can be reached at jbailey@baileypub.com.