Golf Digest has some good stuff in the current issue, both by Ron Kaspriske, their fitness editor.
The first one is a player profile on Billy Horschel, Sunday’s winner in New Orleans. It’s one of those bullet point affairs that adds more richness to our sense of just who Horschel is.
I’m not a guy who needs to drink coffee or anything to get myself going in the morning. I wake up, and I’m full of energy.
But the most impressive part is the accompanying photo of Horschel running on Jacksonville Beach with a small, open parachute trailing behind him. He is such a high energy kind of guy, one imagines that this is the only thing that can slow him down. I think it was the photo that attracted Kaspriske.
The second one is a series of six golf exercise photos by Annika Sorenstam and more in line with Kaspriske’s normal interests. Once famous for doing something like 750 situps a day, she certainly has street cred on this one. And she talks a good game too:
Knowing how to make an effective golf swing is useless unless you are fit enough to do it. I believe you need good muscular strength, stability and coordination if you want to play this game well. That means hitting the gym.
The photos are quite interesting because they’re animated in a way that gives you a sense of the motion of each exercise rather than just a static image. And as we watch her demonstrate each one, we are reminded of the sequencing of the golf swing and just how important core strength is to it. What’s nice about these is that they appear to be conceptually simple enough even though we suspect that we’d need to build up to doing them with good form.