Strength Training for Golfers

This chapter provides golfers, coaches, and anyone with an interest in golf an insight into the role strength and conditioning activities can play in supporting and enhancing golf performance. Routledge recently published the Routledge International Handbook of Golf Science, which covers the application of scientific principles from the major sport science disciplines and how they inform and underpin golf performance. Strength training and golf, until relatively recently, were widely considered to be incompatible. All sporting performance is a complex interplay between psychological, tactical, physical, and skill components. The ability to hit the ball further, particularly from the tee when driving and trying to achieve maximum distance, is a crucial component of the modern game. Drive distance has increased drastically in recent years, and is a critical determinant of performance. One approach to improve the player’s potential to generate higher forces and transmit these to the clubhead has been to change the golf swing itself.