Keep Golfers Focused on FitnessJoe SherenPGA of America Director of Instruction/Co-founderS.M.A.R.T. Golf & Fitness Instruction,Chicago, Illinois
Measuring progress in traditional golf instruction is relatively simple. Is a student shooting better scores, or hitting the ball farther off the tee, or playing better than their friends? For PGA of America Golf Professional Joe Sheren, the scorecard also includes real-world scenarios.
“I want to spend my time with students educating them about having a better golf swing, but also about having a better life,” says Sheren, Co-Founder and PGA of America Director of Instruction at Chicago’s S.M.A.R.T. Golf & Fitness Instruction. “I want you to get in and out of your car easier. I want you to feel better when you’re playing with your kids. I want you to be able to go on a golf trip and play three days in a row and get out of bed on the fourth day feeling good. If I’m teaching you the right things and you’re doing it correctly, you’re going to feel better throughout the day every day.”
After starting his coaching career with GOLFTEC and then opening his own indoor studio, Sheren co-founded S.M.A.R.T. with a fitness professional with the idea of making golf and wellness equally important for his clients. That took some boundary-setting at the outset of the business in 2019.
“When we first launched, we would get golfers coming in and asking for golf lessons without fitness, and we had to have the courage to say no,” Sheren says. “It’s tough to turn away business, but we set our standards and didn’t want to deviate. We want to put our best foot forward and show students that we could show them a way to make a better swing with their current function, but there’s another level above that.”
The approach has paid off. S.M.A.R.T. Golf & Fitness Instruction is about to open a third location and currently employs 13 PGA of America Golf Professionals year-round. The company should soon have upwards of 30 employees, all working reasonable hours with work/life balance.
For Sheren, helping clients starts with a fitness screening, as well as his own assessment of how to best motivate that golfer.
“That goes for fitness and golf as a whole: What’s the carrot and what’s the stick?” Sheren says. “In golf, the motivation is wanting to play better, play more, play longer. For fitness, it’s usually that someone’s worried about you: Your doctor or your family wants you to be healthier. Combining those two motivations and seeing results really helps unlock a better version of most people. I always design our programs in a way that should help 100 percent of people, and that’s why we refused to compromise on including fitness in our business.”
As a golf coach, Sheren says it’s important for PGA of America Golf Professionals to realize why people swing the club the way they do – it’s almost always based on their fitness and what movements their bodies are able to make. Improving their health makes swing improvements easier.
“No one picks up a 7-iron and says, ‘How soft can I hit this?’” he says. “People want to swing hard and powerfully. But our brains are also smart about taking the path of least resistance and not doing something that hurts you. So you have to accept that the reason they’re swinging the way they swing is that it’s the way they generate the most power without hurting themselves. We can’t ask them to make a swing that their body isn’t capable of making, so let’s work on the body to attack those physical limitations and make a better swing possible and sustainable.”
Bet on Baby BoomersMichael SizemorePGA of America Director of Golf,The Club at ArrowCreek,Bend, Oregon
The golf boom of the past four years has brought an unprecedented number of younger people into the game. The fact remains, however, that older golfers – especially Baby Boomers – still occupy an important place as the game’s most avid and affluent players. And as that cohort ages, its members are willing to pay to access health and wellness programming that will keep them in the game.
That’s what Michael Sizemore is seeing at The Club at ArrowCreek in Bend, Oregon, where he’s the PGA of America Director of Golf. From his perspective as an executive manager, the importance of health and wellness – and its connection to golf coaching – is undeniable for Boomers.
“Baby Boomers have the highest concentration of wealth of any generation in American history, and they are spending disproportionately on health and wellness,” Sizemore says. “It used to be that 15-20 years ago, golf fitness meant having a 1,500-square-foot gym at the side of the clubhouse with some weights and treadmills. Now you need to have movement studios for group fitness classes and yoga, and recovery rooms for stretching. It’s a conduit for socialization and it ties to golf and overall club usage, and the group we’re serving wants to spend money on this area of their lifestyle.”
As a result, Sizemore and his staff at ArrowCreek have remodeled the club’s fitness area with a new gym and areas for group classes, investing in health and wellness spaces with Technogym equipment.
Sizemore has a long history with fitness himself, having been a hardcore CrossFit athlete for years before injuries took their toll. Now he understands exactly why and how older golfers need help to stay in the game they love while enjoying everyday life.
One Club at ArrowCreek member in particular stands out as an example of how health and wellness can keep an avid player involved in the game. This 74-year-old member had fallen on the course and suffered a severe leg injury. After surgery, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to play the game again. Using techniques learned through his Gray Institute certification, Sizemore worked with him for three months.
“Something I learned from Dr. Gray is that people get less encouragement as they get older, so I tried to be very encouraging and talk to this member like an athlete, not a man in his 70s with a severe injury,” Sizemore says. “This sparked his desire and really got him into it. He’d come see me three days a week, he learned how to get up and down off the ground again, and he started having mobility and balance. Now he’s on the golf course, hitting the ball 250 yards off the tee and playing a lot.
“This is a member who was going to pause his membership or quit the club. Now he’s one of many older players here who are reenergized, playing more and reconnecting socially with other members. From a business perspective, this is incredibly powerful.”
Sizemore likens The Club at ArrowCreek’s revamped fitness center to the mystical pool in the movie “Cocoon” that made the old young again. To him, the magic is in the movement.
“I love working with younger players, too, but there’s such a reward to working with older players who were thinking about giving up the game,” Sizemore says. “The most powerful student-coach experience is when your students become more positive and excited, and can see themselves as a new version of their older selves. Once the body starts to move, it makes them feel better and they start playing in more events and being more connected to the club and the other members. And the more connected you are to the club through fitness and golf, the longer you stay as a member.”