Survival Of The Fittest?

As players bulk up and swing speeds increase, golf debates what's causing injuries to top players.

- Jaime Diaz

THE COURSES, CLUBHEADS and pay cheques are bigger, but the most obvious change to pro golf in the 21st century? The way the players look.

Billowy clothes and dumpy physiques have been all but shamed of the world’s tours, with even the formerly portly profile of senior golf streamlined by the agelessly trim Bernhard Langer. Where was the image of a generic tour pro remade? The gym.

It used to be that genetic gifts were almost wholly responsible for why physically magnetic stars like Snead, Palmer and Norman stood out. But the current era is marked by a new army of clones who are clearly buffed under their stretchy shirts and skinny pants. All the lean muscle is accepted as indispensable for the power game now considered vital as the most efficient path to tour success. To get that way, at least some fitness training – but more commonly, a lot of it – has become mandatory.

It would be hard to argue that the results haven’t been a net positive for the game. On the modern pro tours, ball go VERY far, and the athletic and stylish image of the players is more marketable. Substantively it seems irrefutable that there are more golfers capable of winning tournaments than ever.

But to apply a Newtonian concept that is one of the foundations of the call for increased tour-pro fitness, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And what seems to be an emerging pattern – or perhaps just an aberration – has spurred some traditionalists to voice their latent scepticism about the new order.

Why, the old-schoolers wonder, has it been that since 2000, the very players identified as the best and most physically developed have been so often injured? The names on that rhetorical marquee: David Duval, Tiger Woods and, most recently, Rory McIlroy and Jason Day.