I’ve lifted weights since I was eighteen years old. People in golf constantly told me, “Lifting weights is terrible for golf.” Lots of pros told me that, too. Some said I was “crazy.” When I was on the regular PGA Tour for eighteen years, I pumped iron when I could. I thought it helped me have a more compact golf swing and maybe gain a few yards off the tee. But I was afraid weight lifting might hurt my feel, my touch with the short game. So, I didn’t lift weights for upper body strength much except in the brief off-season back then. I lifted mostly to improve leg and glute strength and gain muscle mass there.
Then one day I played golf 18 holes with the strength trainer for the University of Nebraska football team. They were a powerhouse in collegiate football. He was also doing some consulting work for some NFL teams. He himself was a very muscular, strong guy. We were playing a golf course that had very fast greens. I was amazed at how well he putted and especially how close he lagged his long putts to the hole. He even made a couple of 50 or 60 footers. I asked him, “Doesn’t weight lifting ruin your touch?” He said, “I think it’s just the opposite.” This was before NBA pros were lifting weights. Michael Jordan eventually came along and proved it doesn’t hurt your touch.
During my mid- and late-forties, I didn’t play pro golf much. So, I experimented with lifting weights for my upper body to see how it affected my short game. I thought it didn’t hurt. I soon won the 1984 Tallahasee Open on the TPS, the precursor of today’s Web.com Tour. I look pretty buffed in the picture of the presentation ceremony of me holding the trophy–at least for a naturally sort of skinny, scrawny guy–if I do say so myself.
So, when I turned fifty and went on the Senior Tour, I lifted weights for both lower and upper body. In whatever city we were playing a Senior Tour event, I would search out a gym and lift weights there. I was a member of the national fitness club Bally, and they usually had one or more clubs in cities where we had tournaments. But after a few years, both the regular PGA Tour and the Senior Tour got sizeable trailers with gym equipment that traveled to each tournament so the players could work out easily at the tournament sites. By then, Gary Player and I were not the only ones doing weight training.
But Gary Player and I were the only pros on the regular PGA Tour who ever lifted weights during the time I played there. Gary even hired a weight-training coach and afterwards won the Masters. We thought all the naysayers were nuts. We thought some day lots of pros would lift weights and hit the ball prodigious distances. How we have been proven right.
No one has popularized weight lifting for golf more than Tiger Woods. And he always looks good. Tiger is at St. Andrews, preparing to compete in the British Open this week. Today’s issue of USA TODAY has an article about it and him doing a junior clinic for young kids up to eighteen years of age there at St. Andrews. He says of these junior golfers, “All the kids were asking questions about lifting, what type of lifting, what kind of cardio I do, interval training…. My practice schedule, when do I work out, how often do I work out, my training, recovery tactics.”
Incidentally, Tiger played the last three holes at St. Andrews with some of these kid golfers who lift weights. So much for the parents who were afraid weight lifting would ruin their kid. Ben Kingsley drove the 356-yard eighteen hole.
Tiger continues, “Golf wasn’t a cool thing to do when I was junior. Now this generation of kids are all in the gym, all trying to get stronger, all watching their dits. Now golf has become a sport…. It’s mind-boggling to hear questions like that from kids of their age. Because when I was their age, you were laughted at if you were on the high school golf team. It’s completely changed.”
Indeed! Now, where are all the guys who used to tell Gary Player and I we were “crazy” to lift weights?
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