Countdown to My PGA Tour Card: 5 Weeks
Here's one of the best stats I've heard all season: If I take one stroke off of every round of golf I play over the next five weeks, a PGA Tour card is mine. That's it. One stroke per round.
But how to do it? Sometimes it's the small improvements that are the hardest to make consistently.
For help, I went to the Titleist Performance Institute last week for an all-day performance review. I've had reviews before, but this is in an entirely different category.
The day started at 8:30 a.m. and I worked with seven different specialists who put me through three hours of range of motion tests, a putting and chipping skills test, several hours of equipment fitting and testing, a psychological assessment, and -- just for good measure -- a shoe fitting.
The good news is, much of what my coach and I have been doing to prepare has paid off.
But I did find out two things to which I haven't been paying enough attention. One, my neck isn't very flexible, which means I move my shoulders more than I should when I swing. And two, I've been doing my off-the-course routine all wrong.
I start my routine during the off-season, which is November through January, and usually all I do is work out. I kill myself in the gym during the first three to four weeks and get immediate results. So by the time I'm ready to go back out on the course, I weigh about 185 lbs.
Then over the next ten months I will gain about 20 lbs. and slowly lose pretty much all of the strength I gained during the off-season. It's almost impossible to maintain my workout regimen while I'm playing every week on Tour. But this means that near the end of the season, I can't maintain certain angles because my body fatigues too quickly. I'm worn out.
Obviously I realize now that this kind of a preparation schedule has no sense of balance (though this isn't the first time I've dealt with this problem). A lack of balance is a huge threat to performance -- regardless of what kind of business you run. Running your own show requires stamina and consistency. And killing yourself for three months is not going to get you there.
At the end of my day at the Titleist Performance Institute, I walked away with a new, more focused 30-minute workout routine that I can do all year long to keep up my strength; I have more performance stats than I know what to do with (I have graphs of my "kinetic sequencing," just in case you were wondering); and now I'm the proud owner of a putter custom-made for me by the legendary Scotty Cameron (he works with Tiger, too).
Will any of it help me shave one stroke off of every round in the next few weeks? We'll see.
Find out where Scott ranks on the Nationwide Tour here.
Follow him on Twitter @stallingsgolf