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John Steinbreder, GolfersMD News
Jun 17, 2008
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Almost as remarkable as Tiger Woods’ win in the 2008 U.S. Open was the stellar play of Rocco Mediate and the way he took the world’s best golfer to absolute limit at Torrey Pines.
It wasn’t just that Mediate was ranked 158th in the world the week before the national championship, or that he had not won on the PGA Tour since 2002. It was also the fact that he is a middle-aged, 45-year-old with chronic back troubles. Not exactly the perfect candidate to do battle with the fittest player in the game.
But Mediate was more than up to the task, and his ability to do so speaks volumes about what good health and fitness can do for a golfer. “Rocco demonstrated the benefits of sports specific conditioning,” says GolfersMD expert Dr. Vijay Vad, a sports medicine specialist and researcher at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan. “His body has been through the rigors of the game for a long time, and he has obviously figured out ways to adapt to them, most likely through back and core strengthening.”
According to Dr. Vad, strength is an obviously critical ingredient for success. “Consider that at age 40, you lose one percent of your muscle mass each year,” he says. “But it is possible to retard some of that with very simple weight training, for as little as 10 minutes a day, three days a week.”
Equally important for golfers – whether top athletes like Mediate or weekend hackers – is flexibility and endurance, both of which can also be enhanced through basic conditioning. "Flexibility is perhaps more critical in golf than it is in a lot of other sports, especially when it comes to your back and hips and being able to make good turns,” Dr. Vad says. “Like muscle mass, you can lose that as well as you get older. And endurance is essential for being able to stay strong for entire rounds of golf, and tournaments.
“Obviously, Mediate is up to par in all those areas, otherwise there is no way he is competing so well against the No. 1 golfer in the world,” Vad concludes.
But there is another factor as well, and unlike the other two, it is one over which he has very little control. “That is his genetics,” Dr. Vad adds. “Rocco is clearly blessed to be in very good health and shape at the age of 45.”
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