My journey through golf started as a casual golfer during my college days and as a caddie at Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina shortly after graduating. I became interested in fitness while attending Western New England University in Springfield, Massachusetts, where I studied Sport Management and Kinesiology. After wanting to become a sports agent, the idea of attending law school to attain that goal steered me in a different direction, and I went all-in on fitness.
I moved south to Charleston, South Carolina in 2005, where I started training young athletes under my own business — Maximum Results Fitness — and fell in love with helping people. I caddied at Kiawah and built my personal training business simultaneously for seven years. In 2018, I started to get serious about my golf game and put an increased focus on how my own personal training affected my golf skills. I was always a heavy lifter, which hindered the flexibility and mobility I needed to adequately swing a golf club. I developed a deeper understanding of the merits of training specifically for golf.
I met my business partner and co-owner of New York Golf & Fitness, Adam Paddock, in 2022. Adam played golf in high school and junior college and worked for a local PGA of America Golf Professional throughout his teenage years. He became a client of mine, and we dove hard into the golf fitness training, understanding that just getting into better shape would improve his golf game. Focusing on golf-specific training and committing to this complete lifestyle change would take him to another level on the golf course, as well as in his daily life.
After finishing fifth in our county championship in 2022, Adam realized that he lost to younger, taller and better-fit golfers. Having the ability to rectify only one of those deficiencies, we worked hard that winter until he told me the following April, “I’ll see you in November.”
After starting the 2023 golf season with the lowest scores of his life, the results gradually got higher throughout the summer…as did his weight. He stopped working with me, thinking that golf and fitness were mutually exclusive. We got back at it that fall, with Adam meeting me at the gym at 5:00 in the morning. After four years, we’re still training every day.
2022 was also the year I moved my business’s attention to golf-specific training. After seeing Adam’s results, as well as my own, I realized that this was an untapped market in our area. After all, athletes of all ages know the benefits of training for basketball, football and track and field, but what about a rotational sport like golf? I started teaching golf fitness classes at our local country club and training clients out of a gym in our town.
Fast forward to the winter of 2024-2025, and Adam and I learned of an opportunity to acquire a space in the heart of our city, Kingston, New York. The owner, a fitness client of mine, gave us a tour, and I immediately saw it. I saw the machines, the tools and the golf simulators in my mind. After considering the reasons for and against this venture, we were motivated to make it happen. So, while on the golf course at Caledonia Golf & Fish Club in Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, we got the call that the financing went through and the space was ours. Combining our passions for golf and fitness, we opened New York Golf & Fitness in December of 2025, and we’ve been busy since the day we opened.
We have a full gym that features state-of-the-art, custom equipment that supports functional movement, strength training and recovery, and was built specifically for our business. In addition, we offer four Uneekor golf simulators that are paired with GSPro software for an exceptional golf experience that offers accurate data, competitive opportunities and the perfect practice environment for the serious golfer.
Although 40 percent of our clientele are committed to both sides of our business, the other 60 percent is pretty evenly split — half of them play golf, and the other half works out. This, of course, provides a world of opportunities for us to share all aspects of our facility with all of our customers. We can grow the game of golf among our fitness-minded customers while motivating and inspiring our golfers to not only consider their long-term health, but also the impact that fitness might have on their golf games.
We have a PGA of America Associate Teaching Professional on staff and look forward to facilitating programs that marry his knowledge of the technical side of the golf swing and mine of the physical side of the body. We will run these types of programs for adults and for kids, and can even host two groups at a time, switching them between golf and fitness to maximize time and space. Our pro, Andrew Deforest, is not only teaching golf lessons, but fitting clients for new clubs, teaching us club repair and helping us run our leagues, so we can provide a holistic menu of services. It’s a very symbiotic relationship.
We also look forward to hosting summer camps for kids in our climate-controlled space, and have even gotten commitment from a few local pros who not only see the benefit of teaching youth golfers using technology, but also doing so indoors, where their attention is more acute away from the heat and sun of summer. Our relationships with local golf courses will enable us to bring them to the course as our programming curriculum warrants.
We are a membership-only facility with options to meet different goals and budgets, encouraging performance-minded individuals who want to improve themselves and their golf games to join our community.
In preparing to dive into our own business, many people we met reinforced the notion that longevity in golf, whether at the competitive or recreational levels, is contingent upon taking care of one’s body. We welcome our fitness-minded golfers with that philosophy in mind every day.
Mike Romano is the co-owner and lead trainer at New York Golf & Fitness in Kingston, New York. For more information about New York Golf & Fitness, log on to their website today.