Special section: Fitness has big impact on golfers

Victoria Sun

Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2002 | 8:58 a.m.

About two miles from the TPC at Summerlin, a 10,000 square-foot HealthSouth sports science rehabilitation institute sits at the disposal of every pro in the Invensys Classic.

The building, used for physical therapy and fitness training, opened last year.

At most PGA tournaments, a traveling HealthSouth fitness trailer and a physical therapy trailer are situated at the golf course.

The trailers won't be here because it wasn't feasible to transport them from Williamsburg, Va., site of the last week's Michelob Championship, to Las Vegas and then back to the East Coast for the Walt Disney World Resort Golf Classic in Lakeland, Fla.

So if a player wants a better workout facility than the one he'll find at his hotel, he can wander over to the plush HealthSouth building.

"Fitness is becoming a really critical factor in golf," said Mark Benson, the western region golf coordinator for HealthSouth. "The swings are different. It's more about power putting a lot of stress on the back, shoulder and wrist."

Benson, based in Las Vegas, has worked with the PGA Tour for four years and travels to a tour stop once a month to supervise the fitness trailer.

He has seen the fitness craze evolve on tour.

"They have to (stay fit) because of their grueling schedule and because of the nature of golf creating so many injuries," Benson said of the toruing pros. "One of the issues is it's getting harder and harder to make the top 125 so adding tournaments late in the year is important.

"In the past, guys would take time off to heal their bodies, but now you can make $500,000 or more a tournament. I've had several players say to me, 'I can't afford not to work out or be fit because if I get injured it's very expensive for me and you just don't want to go to Q-School.' "

When they're at home, Benson said locals Craig Barlow, Ed Fryatt, Bob May and Ernie Gonzalez have trained or gotten treatment at the sports science center.

Among others on tour, Robert Allenby, Stuart Appleby, Vijah Singh, Mike Weir and Bob Estes are most diligent at working out at the traveling trailers.

"If there is a trailer, they'll do a hard workout Tuesday and Wednesday, come in Thursday morning, due a stretch before they play and a maintenance workout through the weekend," Benson said.

Las Vegas physicians Gregory T. Bigler and James R. Dettling with University Orthopedics of Las Vegas will serve as the tournament's on-call physicians. They will be assisted by two HealthSouth therapists.

This year, sponsor's exemptions were given to Las Vegans Jeremy Anderson, Robert Gamez and Bill Harvey, along with Bubba Dickerson, Bryce Molder, Jeff Gallagher, Blaine McCallister and Peter Jacobsen.