Ultimate springtime golf fitness tips for "real" golfers

By Tim McDonald,
National Golf Editor

For those of you unfortunate enough to live in the North, you must be salivating at the thought of the spring golf season.

Hold on, Tiger. You ain't the man you used to be. You can't just jump up and go straight to the golf course after a long winter of sloth and mold.

Now, you will find any number of charlatans willing to sell you their total golf fitness regimens. These sleazoids always assume you're a golfer interested in a cleaner, healthier way of living and golfing. I've seen you out on the course, and I know that's not the sort of thing you're "into."

So here is my total golf fitness regimen for the "real" golfer:

• For God's sake, you have to strengthen your core! This involves eating really hard food, like jawbreakers. Eat a bag of those and have your neighbor punch you in the gut to see if your core is all it can be.

Options: Month-old fudge, Purina Dog Chow, pine bark.

• You also have to really work your obliques, I mean really work the hell out of them. Here's the perfect exercise for that. Lie flat on your back with knees bent slightly wider than your hips. If you have really fat hips, you're either going to have to really stretch your knees like in a cartoon, like The Elastic Man from India, or just skip this exercise. In fact, if you have really fat hips, just skip playing golf, nobody wants to see you out on the course.

Now, you slim-hipped people reach your hands to the ceiling like you're crying out for the Lord Jesus Christ to spare you from your miserable existence. You can hold light hand-weights, or not. What do I care? Lift your head and chest toward the ceiling and rotate to reach both hands just outside of your fat, right knee. Repeat on the left side. Now, take a breather. Ask Christ for forgiveness.

• Breathing exercises: Breathing properly and deeply is critical, especially for those tense moments on the course when normally you would start crying.
This deep-breathing exercise involves attending your local adult movie house, or calling up one of those sites on your Internet browser. Follow your instincts. It's either that or follow mine, and then you're looking at jail time.
• Horizontal abduction/adduction: I can't give you much help here, because I always get "horizontal" confused with "vertical," and I have no idea what adduction is. Who came up with that word, anyway? It's a stupid word and should be eliminated from the English language, if it's even English.

• Standing hip rotation: Don't do this. It makes you look like a girl.

• Alcohol fitness: How many times have you lost $2 Nassaus because while you were getting hamboned, your playing partners were just holding up that bottle of Jack Black pretending to drink?

Well, no need to waste good liquor. You can still drink and maintain your competitive edge. You just need to build up a tolerance. Stand upright in a dark closet, with a wide stance, and suck it down. Keep drinking until your wife leaves you.

• Aerobics: Ha! Don't make me laugh. This is golf!

• Putting: Don't bother to practice putting. Putting in golf is overrated. I play golf maybe 200 times a year and I've yet to meet anyone who can putt. You either make it or you don't. If you miss, just keep putting until the ball goes in the hole. Simple.

• Seniors: As we age, our bodies react differently, so seniors must prepare for golf differently than young punks. An important thing to remember is that there is an inverse relationship of increased ear hair to laughably short drives off the tee.

So keep those ear hairs trim and neat. If you're proud of your thick mane of ear hair, don't sweat it. If you're short off the tee, you're probably small in other areas, and I think you know what I'm talking about.

• Excuses: A healthy psychological outlook is a must for Better Golf. If you can convince yourself that the snap hook you hit into the weeds over there is not your doing at all, you'll retain the confidence needed to excel in the game.

The first time you smack one of your all-too-typical lousy shots, turn to your playing partner and snarl," "Will you stop that!" Look at him, looking all hurt and everything. Who would have thought golf fitness could be so much fun?

• Torque development in the downswing: This is so important, I can barely contain myself. This is vital to any golfer who has ever wanted to improve his score. You could even say it is absolutely critical in terms of reaching your full potential as a golfer and knowing what it is to be truly human.

• Alignment and posture: Face the target squarely and stand erect, with your rump jutting out slightly. Feels a little silly, doesn't it? Can you think of another situation in life where you would position yourself in such an odd manner? I can't.

ODDS ON HASSELBERG ACES: WAY MORE THAN A MILLION TO 1

According to Golf Digest, the odds on a PGA Tour player making a hole in one are roughly 3,000 to 1, the odds on a low-handicapper making an ace about 5,000 to 1 and the odds on an average player dunking his tee shot more like 12,000 to 1.

OK, but what are the odds on a father and daughter playing in the same threesome both making 1's in a span of five holes? The best guess would probably be somewhere in the range of 35 million to 1.

As statistically improbable as it sounds, that's what Dana Hasselberg and her father, Glen, did on March 20 during a round at Angel Park in Las Vegas.

"We had our Minnesota gang of Dwight Lundeen (Becker), David Lundeen (Little Falls), Greg Johnson (Delano), Gary 'Shooter' Fredrickson (Becker), Dan Johnson (Hopkins), along with Dana and me," Glen reported on his return. "We played the Mountain Course in the morning followed by the Palmer Course in the afternoon."

The group lost one of its number when Fredrickson had to leave after nine holes in the afternoon to catch a plane. That left the Lundeen brothers and Greg Johnson in the first threesome, with Dan Johnson and the Hasselberg father-daughter combo in the second.

On the 13th hole, which was playing 114 yards according to a laser measurement, Dana knocked the ball into the cup with a pitching wedge.

"Much cheering," noted the proud father.

Dana is a 3.5-handicapper, and she's had a lot of success in golf. At Staples-Motley High School, where her father was the head coach, she played on two state championship teams, a state runner-up and another team that finished third in her six varsity seasons. She also played four years of college golf, the first year and a half at Bradley and the last two and a half at Bemidji State.

All of that notwithstanding, this was the first hole in one for the 26-year-old.

Four holes later, at No. 17, a 174-yard par-3, the Lundeen-Lundeen-Johnson group waved up the Hasselberg-Hasselberg-Johnson threesome, and Glen, using a 7-wood, didn't bother with the formality of landing his ball and letting it roll into the cup. He landed it in the cup on the fly!

"Six witnesses," Hasselberg pointed out. "You can't beat that. To have the other group all standing there on the green watching the shot, that was priceless."

Another aspect of the hole in one that Hasselberg enjoyed was the fact that this was his 10th, which means that he is now tied in that category with his neighbor, Bill Israelson.

"So Izzy doesn't have that to hold over me anymore," Glen said, giving a clue to the nature of their relationship, in which both parties spent large percentages of their days trying to think of new and imaginative ways to needle each other.

Hasselberg, who is the MGA Northwest Region Vice-President just turned 59 this week (he was born on March 26, 1949, which was a Saturday) and sports a 6.4 handicap, isn't sure but he has probably used nine different clubs to make his 10 aces, beginning with a driver.

"I made the first one on the old 10th hole at Bemidji Town & County, which was a par-4," he said. "And I don't remember making any two of them with the same club, except for a 6-iron. I think I made two with that club."

In 1999, Golf Digest reported that an insurance company had put the odds on a pro making an ace at 1 in 3,756 to one. And or an amateur: 1 in 12,750. The same issue had the odds of an amateur making two holes in one in the same round at 9,222,500 to 1.

But a year later, the magazine commissioned Francis Scheid, Ph.D., the retired chairman of the Boston University math department, to re-calculate the odds.

Among other things, he determined that the odds on one player making two aces in the same round were 67 million to 1.

He said nothing, at least not that Golf Digest reported, about the odds on a father and daughter both accomplishing the feat in the same round.

"I really do wonder what the odds are," Glen said. "It sure was fun. As much as I enjoyed making one myself, it was even more special -- way more special, I'd have to say -- that Dana got her first one."