Mahoney column: Get fit, get to the gym and put that pint of Guinness down

By Paul Mahoney

There used to be a sign pinned to the noticeboard at Llandaff rugby club in Cardiff that stated: “We get fit to play. We don’t play to get fit.”

It’s probably still there in the corridor between the changing rooms and the bar – a reminder to take it easy on the ale and pork scratchings. It was a rallying call for players to turn up for training and a reminder to keep up their own personal regimes and treat their bodies as temples, not amusement arcades.

There are plenty of signs at golf clubs, mostly telling people what they can’t do. No this, no that, no the other, no welcome. But never have I seen a sign encouraging getting fit. On the contrary, signs on noticeboards often advertise green fee specials to include a full breakfast or pie, chips and a pint.

Ah yes, the fabled golfing breakfast of champions, say the tubby middle-aged chumps. Put me down for toast and marmalade, too. And a pot of tea. I once went on a golf trip where we had a Guinness as an early riser side order. “We get fat to play…”  Proof, if it were needed, that a club golf is mostly a past-time masquerading as a sport only because a similar game is played on the telly. Not even Sunday league pub football teams take to the field ten minutes after a belly-full of bacon and eggs and black pudding.

When Rory McIlroy wowed the sporting world in 2007 finishing as the best amateur in the Open Championship at Carnoustie, he was an 18-year-old with the physique of a string of beans. He’s eaten a lot of beans since then. And meat. But not inside a butty swimming in tomato sauce shortly before heading to the practice ground or the first tee.  Last week, McIlroy helped launch the Nike Training Club.

It has nothing to do with teaching its athletes how to speak in soundbites and to answer questions in Press conferences like a politician – an art perfected by Tiger Woods. This is a club you can join by simply downloading an app onto your laptop or smart mobile telephone.

It’s so easy to do even a mildly intelligent mobile telephone could work it out for you. As Nike isn’t paying me the same rate as McIlroy to advertise it, I’m not going to tell you where you can find it but you’ll come across it easily enough by typing it in the search bar of a popular search engine – they’re not paying me, either.

There are over 100 exercise sessions to turn scrawny Northern Irish amateurs into Major champions and lumpy weekend golfers into less lumpy weekend golfers. The app says it will make you fitter and stronger and more flexible and more mobile (hire a buggy?) improving your hips, knees, ankles, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.

McIlroy was asked by Golf Monthly at the launch how he motivates himself to get out of bed early to head for the gym instead of the eat-all-you-can breakfast buffet.

“We golfers are quite a bunch of early risers, anyway, so it’s never been a problem,” McIlroy said failing to realise that it’s not quite the same challenge for we middle-aged golfers who spend the night before our rounds swigging lager in an Indian restaurant until 1 o’clock in the morning. “Just have to get to bed a bit earlier,” McIlroy said. Nope, just have to hit the snooze button.

McIlroy said his training nemesis is planking with a 35lb weight resting on his side. “Holding that for 30 seconds is tough,” he said. For the rest of us, holding just a plank for 30 seconds would require a lie down on the sofa.

It is doubtful McIlroy’s fitness coach even owns a sofa. Steve McGregor speaks softly on his Facebook chat with Golf Monthly but has that gentle delivery that says: “I am not going to yell at you, but I am going to make every bone in your body hurt and I am going to make you cry.” He has the evil eyes, too, of a man that enjoys his work.

McGregor explained McIlroy’s training schedule. Rory doesn’t like to play much in winter, he said. Me neither. Too cold, wet and windy and nobody likes winter greens. Although obviously if you have homes in Dubai and Florida that’s less of a problem. So Rory embarks on endurance training – running, swimming and cycling. Early in the year he builds up his core strength then, during the main season, it’s all about loading up and firing his explosive power. It’s exhausting just thinking about it.

But for those of us whose pre-golf training involves trying not to pull a hamstring while putting on our spikes in the golf club car park, McGregor said anything Rory does in the gym can be done by weekend club golfers, too.

“In a football game, you cover 10 to 12 kilometres,” he said. “It’s the same for golfers, but they cover that over four hours. The power element in rugby and football is done in a different time frame.”  That’s the first time anyone has ever compared playing golf to football and rugby. I must be doing it wrong.

The gap between professional golfers and weekend golfers is becoming ever wider. And not just in waist measurements. The science of fitness and physical activity has moved on. But it’s nothing new. Gary Player has been banging on about it forever. The nine-time Major champion is 80 years old and begins each day with 1,300 sits up and pushing 300lb on a leg machine. It’s enough to make you want to go back to bed.

Golf’s governing bodies need to encourage people to get fit to play golf because nobody is going to play golf to get fit. Especially not from behind the steering wheel of a buggy. I’ve downloaded the Nike Training App and my new vigorous fitness regime starts tomorrow. Right then, bacon butty anyone?

Tagged Rory McIlroy