Doing “some things,” John Daly says, is fine. But only some.
When golf workouts extend beyond that, he gets anxious.
“I think the hardcore working out is going to hurt these guys,” the two-time major winner said, “and they won’t be playing when they’re 55, 60 years old.” Daly was speaking on the most recent episode of the “Like a Farmer” podcast — which you can listen to in full here — and his thoughts came after discussing Tiger Woods, who’s often credited with popularising strength and fitness training in modern-day golf. Daly said he believed overdoing it can hinder someone, though, and that you don’t have to work out that hard to play golf.
And yes, he knows what you’re thinking — and he said he’s not using this as an excuse for not working out himself.
“I think working out,” Daly said on the podcast, “I think a lot of guys lose their flexibility, and so many guys are mechanical too, they don’t have a lot. That means their body’s not equipped to take the club back as far as I can, or they’re not fortunate to be as flexible as I am, but they work strenuously on the game and getting their swing into exactly the way they want it. But I think working out hurts a lot of these guys, I really do.”
Is there truth to what Daly says? Some. Simply put, overdoing gym work could hurt; any fitness instructor will tell you that. And what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another. But correct off-course training, under proper guidance, has shown to offer such rewards as distance, flexibility and stamina, while being safe. There’s more to it than, say, bench pressing.
Some, of course, can survive without much training. On the podcast, host Pat Spinosa asked Daly what his workout routine looked like.
Short game, he said.
“Mine was just practice wedges and chip and putt all day long,” Daly said on the podcast. “I could do that all day long; that’s all I did. You know, people say I don’t practice a lot, but they don’t know. When I get to a tournament, if you’re not ready, you shouldn’t have to practice as much — you should just kind of go and get warmed up basically, and a lot of times, I won’t even hit a ball; I’ll just go to the putting green, hit a few chips and go. But that’s my mentality.
“And you’ve got to understand, playing with these guys when I came out on tour, it was like, hey, you know, let’s go out and eat and have a few drinks, we play golf, practice a little bit and then we can start drinking. That’s the way golf was played when I came up, and until ’96, ’97, ’98, whenever Tiger came out and the workout stuff started. Well, yeah, it’s too late for me. What am I going to do, bulk up and look like, what, Mr Olympia? Hell no, I don’t want to do that.”
But there is something he would do, he said on the podcast.
Back to that short game thought.
“Yeah, they hit it a mile and stuff,” Daly said on the podcast. “But what happened was, that I’ve seen, is these kids would rather go to the driving range and see if they can hit it 350, but that’s great, but can you chip and putt? When I retire from this game — hopefully I live long enough — man, I’d love to help these kids with their short game. Because I feel like I’ve got the feel for it and I can work on mechanics with it too. And that would be something that I could really, really give back to the game.
“Tougher on amateurs because especially — unless they’re beginners, but if an amateur is set in their own ways, you can teach them a few things, but more or less for me, I’d like to teach professionals, help professionals.”
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