Strength causes injury, as gyms muscle in to golf

It is initially strange to hear of so many golfers battling with injuries that were virtually unheard of 10 to 20 years ago. Yet like any question, the answer when it becomes apparent seems obvious.

As an avid follower and player of golf for many years (a six handicapper for longer than I care to remember, despite playing three to four games a year lately), the injuries to top players have been frustrating.

Examples of these are wrist strains, neck strains, knee pain, and so on. Yes, some very good golfers in the past have had inuries, such as Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman with hip replacements, but they only got these much later in their playing careers. Now, it seems every other player is suffering some form of injury, even at a young age.

So what has changed, despite all the science we have supposedly developed regarding injury prevention? We have to go back about 15 years, to the introduction of fitness in golf.

Around that time, players were being persuaded to go to the gym and to build more muscle, in the name of increasing power, hitting the ball further, and being ‘fit’ to play golf.

From what I can assume, the goal was to make golfers more athletic, and there was no better example than Tiger Woods. However, one of the first golfers I remember falling foul of this was David Duval. He was a very good player, a little overweight by modern standards, but this did not affect his swing nor his performance.

Then one day he appeared on the golf course looking like a blonde Arnold Schwarzenegger, with bulging arms, no gut and a swagger that was soon to vanish from our TV screens for a few years. Why? Because this new, fitter, leaner body ruined his swing.

Duval disappeared from the PGA scene until a few years later, when he had returned to his former ‘overweight’ self. Lo and behold, his swing had returned, and he once again began to play better golf.

So what happened? You have to realise the golf swing is designed around your body. If your physique alters, your golf swing has to alter as well. Look what happened to Vijay Singh. Around 1997 he won nine times on the PGA tour, was number one in the world (beating Woods) and was top money earner for the year.

Then he fell into the trap. He was persuaded to start a fitness programme and started hitting the gym.

Have you heard much of Vijay since then? Me neither. The first thing to go was his putting, which is common when you add bulk, as this will affect the finesse parts of the golf swing first. And as all good golfers know, when your putting is poor, it adds pressure on your driving and fairway game, and a vicious cycle begins.

Let’s come back to Tiger Woods, who at a tender age had knee surgery and has had physical problems since. This can be put down to too much work in the gym, not too much golf. I remember watching a video of him playing as a new pro on a plane trip overseas. He was lean, almost skinny, but had a lovely backswing and a fluid movement through the ball. There was perhaps a third of the effort he now uses to hit a golf ball.

Watching Tiger these days is painful. He puts enormous effort into something that can be effective with so much less. It is almost a matter of slowing it down to a blur. All this I believe is due to him getting bulkier, and believing it will help him hit the ball further. However, bulkiness comes at the expense of flexibility. He has lost so much rotation flexibility in the hips that he has developed a classic reverse pivot.

This type of action puts excess strain on the knees, which become victims of the lack of hip range of motion, and the knee will eventually pack up, as was the case with him. Over-exercise or incorrect exercise will cause soft tissue tightness, which in turn can cause weakness, and this results in the body needing to compensate. Somewhere down the line, some part of the body will give way.

If you want to play better golf, get out of the gym, get on the driving range and the course and train your muscles for playing golf, not for lifting pathetic weights in a manner that you will never use on a golf course.

One major thing to remember, remain flexible, as flexibility is the key to strength, and to an impressive and easy golf swing. All you have to do is look at Tom Watson’s swing. It hasn’t changed for as long as I can remember, but then again, neither has his physique.

Vijay, get back on the range and hit thousands of balls as you did to get to number one. And stay the hell out of the gym.