Jack did it.
I’m not Jack.
Mid-spring 2024, I received one of those warning shots across the bow that people of my age and stature are destined to get. Actually, I took a hit. In the grand scheme, it was a health scare from which I rebounded instantly, but the hit was a stern warning, nonetheless, striking home after years of ignoring repeated warnings from my body and my doctor that things needed to change.
What does this have to do with golf? Quite a bit, really, for you see, I lost my swing … along with the now nearly 80 pounds.
Let’s get some context here. I’ve never been a great golfer. I got close to a single-digit handicap many years ago, but have steadily, inexorably crept upward since. That didn’t affect my love for the game. Golf is a social and aesthetic pursuit. I love playing with friends and family, being out in the fresh air, swinging, laughing. It mattered not – muni goatpatch or one of the cover-art courses my life and career have afforded me – golf mattered. My swing was flawed but like so many golfers who play often but don’t work at it, it was my swing.
And now it is gone.
When Nicklaus decided in 1969 he needed to slim down, he dropped 20 to 30 pounds. It goes without saying he did not lose his swing, and, in fact, his physical changes – mental, too, it’s a package deal – allowed him to take a stellar first golf career and parlay it into the greatest in history.
I mostly nearly cannot hit a golf ball.
And I couldn’t be happier. It’s only golf, and I can re-learn that stuff. I eat well, I sleep well. I love exercising now – out on the road on my bike, in the gym, hiking the majesty of the desert mountains that surround our home. My vitals and blood chemistry are off-the-charts fantastic. Sure, I’m still adjusting to my new balance points, a center of gravity that is markedly in a new place. A LOT of me is gone, after all.
I simply can’t hit a golf ball.
Remember all that stuff about mass and motion from high school science class? No? OK, Dr. Greg Rose, Titleist Performance Institute co-founder and a pioneer in studying how the human body functions in relation to the golf swing, explains:
I am on the wrong side of that divide. I’ve always been an up-tempo swinger, very up-tempo. Friends long have quipped I seem to strike the ball before completing my back swing. I’m nearly Medicare-age with a driver swing speed still at 100 mph, and it all works if I time it right. Add in a roundhouse takeaway “built” over time to accommodate my 6-foot-1-inch/290-pound stature, delivering a de-lofting strike from inside, and what Rose calls my “sequence of motions” offered no room for error.
With far less of me to move out of the way, in the simplest terms I swing even faster now, and to my repertoire of (mostly) sweeping draws and the usual rec-player misses, I now have added tops, outright whiffs, and enough shanks to nearly impart visible wear on my clubs’ hosels.
Fans might recall Carl Pettersson, the five-time PGA Tour winner from Sweden. One of the more “visible” players out there, he shed a good amount of poundage in a quest to keep pace with what he saw Tiger and other gym rats doing and gained a first-hand lesson in the law of unintended consequences.
He went on to win again after regaining weight. There also is the matter of losing muscle mass when shedding pounds, and that, too, affects sequencing, along with strength and swing speed.
This stuff is personal, so my particulars aren’t all that important. Suffice to say a change was demanded. I declined a pharmaceutical assist. I knew why I’d gotten fat, and the answer was as simple as reversing it.
At the risk of sounding tone-deaf or egotistical, I found it easy. Oh, I worked at it, I became very conscious of caloric inputs and portion sizes. Thankfully my wife and I are both accomplished cooks and never really had a hankering for quick fix/fast solutions, so dietary changes were a simple re-programming, and we did NOT go Keto or Atkin’s or paleo or vegan or whatever, and not a hell of a lot is excluded; it is true what they say of the Mediterranean diet. I, of course, cut back on Pinot Noir and the like. And I exercise: four days of cardio and two one-hour sessions of weights/resistance per week.
Find your path.
And path is the key concept. I’m not dieting. I have no weight goal. I’m simply on a journey, following a new lifestyle to where it leads me. “Diet” means denial. “Goal” means stopping at some point. I prefer being on a health walkabout.
The idea is to live longer. And longer is good. Longer means more time for golf. Yep, lessons and all that, too. That process has begun, working with a friend who runs the Palm Desert Golf Academy at Desert Willow Golf Resort in Palm Desert, Calif. We are quite literally going back to the fundamental building blocks: grip change, stance, posture, and ball position; starting on plane and staying there.
Still, great to be in a place where I have to and can do this. Winning by losing.