The British open golf at St. Andrews this week is the major sporting event in town. Lots of column inches devoted to alterations to the course layout, speculation regarding weather and whether we’ll see a British winner (looking good as I write as Rory McIlroy is -8). Oh yeah…and a small amount on Tiger Woods. It’s testament to his profile that given his recent average form he is the dominant talking point wherever he goes, this week a little more due to his choice of putter than his choice of woman (a cynic might suggest that this week has been a huge Nike marketing campaign complete with quotes from his caddy). His personal life aside, Woods has done a lot for golf worldwide, including a change of culture surrounding physical preparation.

There’s a contemporary group of British players including Ian Poulter, Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose and Ross Fisher (I’ve probably missed a couple of names that could also be included), who walk onto the course as athletes with a physique to match instead of the more traditional golfing shape (see Colin Montgomery and John Daly for details). I think that this is in no small part due to Tiger’s influence.

When he first came onto the scene, the distance he was driving the ball alone gave him a massive edge, he looked every part the professional athlete and was obviously in much better condition than his peers, he raised the bar. In the years since, other players on the tour have been playing catch up and putting more and more emphasis on the gains that can be made in the gym as well as time spent on the course. As a result we’ve seen schemes like the Titleist Performance Institute spreading strength and conditioning to mainstream golf as well as around the professional circuit.

Hopefully, as a result we’ll see a reduction in injuries in golfers (professional and amateur) and an increase in performance. Unfortunately, that will more than likely result in course layout changes increasing difficulty as we’ve seen at St Andrews, and for those golfers (I’m including myself in this) who are more lacking in the skill rather than conditioning component, this is less than ideal!

There are many people who believe that you don’t need to do any fitness training to play golf, all you do is stand still, hit a ball and walk to the next tee…Right….Wrong. The age of Tiger has come upon golf and showed the masses that a strong and well conditioned athlete can sweep the board and dominate the sport.

Golf is the most successful and highly supported team that I coach at Bournemouth University and as a Titleist Performance Institute (T.P.I.) Certified Golf Fitness Instructor I put more time into working with them to ensure that they stay on top. Our top nine has an average handicap of 0 and is made of some very dedicated players.

There are many exercises in my programme that people may not expect to see, we do Hang Cleans, Squats and Deadlift variations because I believe these fundamental lifts should be in any sports programme to create a rounded athlete. We also do a large amount of mobility, stability and balance work, which is vital for a consistent Golf swing and preventing injuries due to poor form.

The programme starts with a Golf specific movement screen taken from T.P.I. This will show up problem areas, such as poor external shoulder rotation or pelvic stability, which could lead to a number of swing faults, many of which could not be rectified with Golf specific coaching alone; The athlete simply may not be able to do what the golf pro is telling them to due to weakness or instability. This would make the lessons pointless and slow the development of the Golfer.

The screening results are used to directly create a programme for that golfer, it is designed to address their specific issues and to also increase their general strength and power production capabilities. When combined the individual will now be functionally strong and have the right mix of stability and mobility to be able to perform consistent swings and long drives, they can then work with their golf coach in the confidence that they have fewer physical limitations holding them back.

This review focuses on golf and a paper by Sell et al (2007) that looked at the physical characteristics of golfers across a number of bands of proficiency. The authors hypothesised that those golfers with lower handicaps would score higher in the recorded measures of strength, flexibility and balance.

The study looked at 257 male, right handed golfers (age: 45 ± 12.8 years, height: 180.6 ± 6.5 cm, weight: 87.9 ± 12.6 kg) participated in the study and they were grouped according to their handicap (<0, 1-9, 10-20). Isometric strength was tested using isokinetic dynamometry on shoulder internal and external shoulder rotations and hip adduction and abduction.

Range of motion and flexibility was measured at the shoulder, hip, hamstring and torso using a goniometer. It measured internal/external rotation, flexion/extension and abduction of the shoulder, flexion/extension and adduction/abduction of the hip, supine hamstring flexibility using the knee extension test and, with pelvis stabilised, maximum torso rotation.

Postural stability or balance was measured using a Kistler force plate under eyes closed and eyes open conditions. Participants were barefoot and  tested on each leg individually, they were asked to focus on a target 2 metres in front at eye level and maintain their balance while data was collected in medial/lateral and anterior/posterior planes for 10 seconds and the same procedure for eyes closed was repeated with the obvious difference.

Results showed that the <0 handicap group had significantly greater right hip abduction, right hip adduction, left hip abduction, right torso rotation and left torso rotation strength than both of the other groups and significantly greater right shoulder internal rotation, right shoulder external rotation and left shoulder external rotation strength than the 10-20 handicap group. The 0-9 handicap group also had significantly greater right torso rotation and left torso rotation strength than the 10-20 handicap group. There were also significantly better scores for the <0 handicap group over the other groups and for the 0-9 group over the 10-20 handicap group for many of the balance and flexibility scores, for full details the orginal paper can be consulted.

The paper concludes by saying ample evidence is provided for the efficacy of training programs to be designed to improve golf performance because highly proficient golfers showed significantly greater multiple joint strength and flexibility as well as better balance.

For an individualised strength and conditioning program to improve your driving distance, driving consistency and putting distance control get in contact.

• Sell, T.C., Tsai, Y.S., Smoliga, J.M., Myers, J.B. & Lephart, S.M. (2007). Strength, flexibility and balance characteristics of highly proficient golfers.  Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 21(4) pp. 1166-1171.