Each month, Irish Golfer Magazine will feature a Player Blog. These will be personal accounts from professionals or elite amateur golfers about life on tour, covering everything from performances, facilities and golf courses to travel, off-course life, and all the highs and lows that come with it.
Our second edition comes from Keith Egan, and the Carton House man details his preparations for the West of Ireland Amateur Championship. Egan won the event in 2024 and has been working hard over the winter to fine-tune his game for Rosses Point. As a Type 1 diabetic, nutrition is key for Egan and, in this blog, he shows how important meal preparation and fitness is for him throughout the championship season.
Throughout the winter I try to take stock and assess what I didn’t do well throughout the season – then, I try to make adjustments, whether they’re big fixes like mechanical issues or individual club issues that I had. That’s what I tend to work on over the winter.
I typically do three, maybe four months of actual practice, but the weather has been so bad this year that it’s been a challenge – at least I had the driving range so I could do some sort of work and now I’m just trying to hone and sharpen up my game before the West. That means trying to play a little bit more links golf, which is something I didn’t get to do at all this winter, and little things like working on half-shots, working on my wedge play, and generally trying to practice more on the course than at the range.
This is when my focus turns to how I can score and how my whole game can perform in an actual tournament.
Life as a working amateur can be challenging; I have to plan my year carefully. This year I’ll only play in 12 events, or so. If you played in everything, you’d be playing over 20, and that’s ok for someone in college or who’s a full-time amateur, but if you have to balance work as well, you must prioritise.
Ideally, I’ll play in as many big events as possible – and hopefully I have the opportunity to do that – but I want to be able to manage how I’m playing as well, so if I’m playing poorly or feeling slightly uncomfortable at all, I’ll probably space out my schedule a little bit more so I can manage my game a little bit better and hopefully feel more comfortable going into the next tournament.
There’s so much golf, especially in May and June this year, so you could end up playing seven events in seven weeks and they’re all on hard golf courses. I need to be able to manage that, not get too many bad habits, and not be sick of golf at the end of that period. So that’s where the winter becomes really important because I want to be playing well going into these tournaments and then I can actually commit to a schedule rather than be feeling that I have to make up ground because I’m playing poorly.
This year, I’d love to play in the Lytham Trophy. I’ve played that golf course in the Amateur Championship, but I’ve never played the Lytham Trophy. As an Irishman, the Irish Amateur is always a non-negotiable, and then you have the likes of the St Andrew’s Trophy and the Amateur Championship which are massive tournaments that you’ll always play in if you can. I don’t know how many years I have left of playing this type of schedule, so I’m keen to play in as many of those as possible. I feel like I’m playing well enough to do well in them, which is key because if you’re not playing very well or if you’re struggling with an aspect of your game, Lytham is the last place you want to be on the planet.
For most of the Irish championships, I know all the courses. I understand what I have to do to play well, so they’re a little bit easier to prepare for. I don’t have to try to get to Seapoint or Baltray two weeks in advance; I can rock up, play my practice round the evening before and then play.
I’m a lot more efficient with my practice now than I have been in the past; when I have 45 minutes or an hour, I’m fully engaged, whether that’s spending 15 minutes working on each part or the full period on my long game. It’s all about working with a purpose, and giving each part of my game the attention it needs.
Because I work for myself, I can structure my time and my schedule so I can always get the windows to practice and it also makes it easier when tournaments come around, but even still, it means taking a lot of time off and though that can be a little frustrating at times, it’s something that I love doing and I’m happy to make the sacrifices for now. Especially because I know I might only have a couple of years left at this level.
As a type 1 diabetic, my life is structured around my nutrition. That’s my number one priority and it just simply has to be like that. I prepare meals for the week every Sunday afternoon, but when I go to a tournament like the West, for example, which runs from Friday to Tuesday, and I probably arrive the night before my practice round, I’ll probably run out of food by the time the matchplay starts if I’m still in it. Then, you switch into survival mode, but luckily, I’ve been doing it so long that I know my body well, know the among of calories I need each day and how my body reacts to certain foods.
I won’t have any real heavy carbs or any dense foods. I won’t eat any type of pasta, any type of pizza, I’ll be trying to get grains like rice, quinoa, or sweet potato for my dinners, but if it’s a 36-hole day, it’s more a case of eating small and eating frequently than eating big meals because my body doesn’t react well when I eat a lot and I feel very full when I’m trying to play golf. Eating smaller foods like fruit or protein bars throughout the day keeps me ticking over a little better, and it makes it easier for me to manage as well.
In terms of gym work in preparation for the championship season, I’ve done all the heavy work – the strength and power work – over the winter, so from now on, it’s about making sure my body is functional and that I’ve no limitations when it comes to swinging the club.
I have a couple of specific areas that I can get a little limited with, so I try to focus on thoracic rotation and hip mobility because those areas tend to have a little more influence on how many bad shots or bad swings I make. By the time we get to the West, which we come to see as the first real tournament, you want to be rid of those disruptive things, to have built as much athleticism as possible, and to be as durable as possible because the season takes a considerable toll, especially when we’re trying to practice a lot as well.
When I get into the season, I want a routine that I can do on a daily basis – one that doesn’t involve muscle soreness or is overly time-consuming, because that all affects your ability to play golf. So, that means a lot of mobility exercises before I play golf, some engagement exercises, and also some stabilizing exercises, so that when I step onto that first tee, I’m capable of competing at a high level.
It’s tough to find a balance with all of this, but it’s what’s worked for me in the past so fingers crossed that it serves me well again in the season ahead.
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