Forethoughts: Fitting Your Top Club

Insights from CAG editor Jon Rizzi

Jon Rizzi | Colorado AvidGolfer

At the risk of sounding defensive, we photographed Emily Talley in January, long before a topless Lexi Thompson muscled her way onto the cover of Golf Digest. And with all due respect to The Great One and Dustin Johnson, last year’s GD cover girl, Paulina Gretzky, is no Emily Talley.

Talley, one of the best golfers ever to play for the University of Colorado, has commanded plenty of attention since graduating in 2012. She’s appeared on The Big Break three times, winning the “NFL Puerto Rico” version in 2013 and coming in second in last year’s inaugural Big Break Invitational. She made all but one Symetra Tour cut last year, catapulting to within eight places of earning her next big break—an LPGA card. For our purposes, she makes the perfect cover subject for our first health and fitness issue. As you’ll learn the Napa native’s fierce commitment to exercise and wellness propels her physically, emotionally and psychologically. She embodies—in more ways than the obvious—the 21st Century “golf athlete.”

That term comes courtesy of Nike. It’s a bit awkward, but it represents what the paunch-less players in its stable—chief among them Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Suzanne Pettersen and Michelle Wie—consider themselves. It’s not just those who wear the Swoosh, of course. Across all golf ranks, bellies are flatter than a laser-leveled tee box and shoulders, biceps and thighs strain against form-fitting fabrics that would make a pro cyclist stare. We live in Colorado, perpetually atop lists of “fittest states” in the country. So it only follows that we view golf as an athletic activity—a “sport” rather than a “game” (despite frequent invocational references to “the Game of Golf ” among the sport’s leadership).

It’s that perspective that informs this issue, our first to focus primarily on what we call the 15th Club: you, the golf-athlete.

You can find all the May issue's health & fitness-focused articles here. For some perspective on the subject, I turned to Curt Pesmen, whom I’ve known since my salad days at Esquire magazine 30 years ago. At that time, he’d just written a book, How a Man Ages, and has existed on the leading edge of health and fitness ever since. As health/features editor of SELF magazine, he helped develop the internationally recognized pink-ribbon breast cancer awareness campaign. He chronicled his successful fight against advanced colon cancer in an awardwinning, seven-part feature in Esquire in 2001 and 2003.

Curt’s fingerprints appear throughout the section, as do those of many others. You’ll find workouts to strengthen your body and accelerate your swing, as well as advice on vision, concentration, nutrition and hydration.

Injuries are also part of golf, so you’ll learn how to avoid and treat the most common ones, as well as what options exist when surgery seems inevitable.

Is it an encyclopedic body of knowledge about golf fitness? Of course not. It’s just the first of what will become an annual edition that celebrates golf as a sport. At the very least, it will give you another club to blame—the 15th—for those fat and thin shots.

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Forethoughts: Mastering the Month

Forethoughts: Bigger than the CAGGYs

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Forethoughts: No Tiger, No Cry

Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it. It publishes eight issues annually and proudly delivers daily content via www.coloradoavidgolfer.com.