I met Maverick four months ago as he was suffering from an episode of acute low back pain.  We eliminated his back pain with treatment, and identified through swing footage his lack of hip turn was contributing towards his swing placing excessive stress on his low back.  This mirrored up with him having a reduced amount of mobility through internal rotation of his trail leg. As a result, we established an exercise program tailored towards targeting these physical restrictions in order to prevent future recurrence of back pain. Recently we have been reviewing his program each time he is in Australia to continue to build on the platform we have established. We have taken him out of pain, into the preventative sphere, and are now building towards a performance based exercise program with intentions on building his swing speed.

We arrived to the course a bit over an hour before the allocated tee time.  This allowed time to settle in, run through a warm up routine consisting of exercises & golf shots, and any last minute preparation.  Mav and I have established a warm up routine that is tailored towards his golf swing & his body.  The Brisbane Golf Club is one of the few golf clubs I have seen that is fortunate to have a small dedicated gym area within their golfing changing rooms. This area consisted of foam rollers, trigger point balls, weights, kettle bells, stretching bands and more.  I only witnessed a minority of the golfers utilising this equipment which surprises me.  A lot of golfers appeared to warm up by simply hitting golf balls without preparing their body physically first.  Of those that did use the gym area, I was also surprised by the amount of golfers spending excessive amounts of time on foam rollers & performing static stretching – something I will write about in the future as I believe modern physiotherapy science & research has found far more effective ways to prepare the body for sport rather than static stretching.  

When it came to the oncourse action – it was great to be able to witness the precision in which a professional golfer goes about planning each shot.  Mav was able to identify exact meterage to the flag stick with each approach shot, identify the wind direction and speed, and then call his shot shape, club choice, and ideal miss.  The wind played a pivotal role during the two days, for example on the par 5 12th hole, a 9 iron was used for a 2nd shot into the green on the Thursday with a helping breeze, whereas on Thursday a 4 iron was used – with both shots being hit from identical fairway positions.   The ball striking on display & ball flight had to be seen to be believed.  It also puts it into perspective, these professional golfers are incredibly good, yet they still miss fairways & they still miss an occasional green. It’s the ability to recover & get themselves up and down for par that sets them above the typical amateur golfer.  

I thoroughly enjoyed my two days caddying experience.  I probably underestimated how physically tough the two days would be – walking ~10km in the sun carrying a set of golf clubs on your back!  It also confirms my passion for helping golfers becoming better golfers by creating better athletes.  Spending 36 holes walking with Mav with discussions ranging from how to increase glute strength, to how to optimise wrist mechanics in the backswing only makes me increasingly excited for what is held in the future for both Mavs golfing career and my career helping other golfers.  Mav and I are touching base this week in the clinic whereby we plan to establish his next exercise routine to help him prepare for the Australian summer of golf, where hopefully he can get a start in the Australian Open.