Your Winter Game

February 2007 Special Advertising Section

Just because it’s called the dead of winter, it’s no reason to let your golf game go dormant. There are plenty of ways to keep the winter fire burning. Here are a few.

Work It Out
Off-season fitness routines, focused especially on flexibility, are always a component of an improved golf game. You can go the Cadillac route or the Yugo route.

The latter? “If I was on a budget, I would probably buy a golf yoga tape or just about any good yoga tape,” says Dave Wieber of the Bloomington branch of Body Balance Golf & Physical Therapy, a national franchise devoted to golf fitness.

For the Cadillac version, you can spend $200 to have Body Balance assess the physiological side of your swing, video-camera and balance analysis included, and tailor an exercise program. “By the time they’re done,” Wieber says of golfers who partake, “they know pretty much everything about their swing and everything about their body.”

Get Thee to a Dome
If you have access to an off-season dome, simulator, or driving range—and there are a dozen such sites in the Twin Cities—hack away, by all means. But do so with a purpose. “It’s actually a great time to change your golf swing,” says Chris Foley, who runs Chris Foley Golf Schools out of Madden’s Resort in Brainerd. “You don’t have to worry about results or scores.”

The idea is not to just visit the dome and see how many times you can blast your driver off the back wall. “There is as much value for golfers practicing their short game as their full swing,” Foley says. “I always encourage people to spend at least half their time [at the golf dome] pitching and chipping.”

Another Foley suggestion: Pause to re-evaluate your mental game, perhaps with a book or tape by Bob Rotella or Patrick Cohen.

Bring the Course Inside
If money is no object—or not a primary one—there’s a great object you can get with your money: a putting and chipping green. Stephen Imholte of Golf Landscapes & Sports Surfaces of Wayzata says his firm undertakes thirty to forty greens a year, 80 percent of them residential. Private homes generally have in-filled or nylon surfaces installed for $12 to $14 a square foot. The in-filled surfaces will take short chip shots, and the ball will run at a consistent speed.

Seek Swing Therapy
Instructional golf gadgets can be great wintertime acquisitions. One of this year’s hottest is from Phil Mickelson’s instructor. Billed as golf’s first real-time analysis software, Rick Smith’s eVision is designed to get golfers’ swings “on plane” by superimposing your swing on Smith’s.

How does it work? “We video your swing from each direction and we burn you a CD-Rom to take home,” explains Jeremy Galbreth, manager at Nevada Bob’s in Roseville. The CD will include a slow-motion look at your swing, Smith’s analysis of what you’re doing wrong, and his fixes and drills for $30 to $40, depending on the number of additional drills you want.