Arms Race: Inside the physical transformation taking place in pro golf

There's an interesting phenomenon happening in baseball: Ball players are getting bigger.

A study from Harvard University found that the percentage of baseball players with an above average BMI has increased from 46 percent to close to 60 percent in the last 60 years. Muscle, fat, whatever combination of extra weight it is, it seems to be helping. Hitters with a higher BMI hit more home runs, and pitchers with a higher BMI have a lower ERA.

As the saying goes, mass is fast.

We're starting to see the same thing happen in golf.

Data on this doesn't exist in golf like it does in baseball, but a cursory look at recent U.S. Open champions hints at the theory.

Of the past 10 U.S. Open champions, nine have stood at least six feet tall—Matt Fitzpatrick, who topped the 6-foot-2 Will Zalatoris on the final hole in 2022, was the lone exception. Seven of those have weighed more than 200 pounds. Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau, who have combined for four of the past eight U.S. Open titles, are each around 6 foot, 215 pounds.

Driving this is a kind of culture emerging underneath golf's speed era. The gym used to be considered a dangerous place for golfers. Not just unhelpful, but one actively detrimental. But that's changed. Golfers have started hitting the weights, and hitting them hard. Lifting heavy is becoming the norm, just as it is in other sports. And golfers are getting bigger and stronger because of it.

"There's been this whole thing of people saying, 'Well, you shouldn't use weights, you should only use [exercise] bands,'" says Rory McIlroy. "But look at me. I don't have the levers. I need to lift. I need to be strong. If I'm not strong, I don't get 190 mph ball speed."

McIlroy first arrived on tour a chubby 150 pounds. Now he's a lean 180.

Over the past few months I've been asking around various players and trainers about this. Is lifting hard and heavy becoming essential for golfers? And if this is so, how can golfers go about strength training in a safe and smart way?

Back to Basics

A surprising theme kept popping up as I was reporting this story: A firm rebuke of training too focused on the specific movements of the golf swing.

"What I do in the gym doesn't really have anything to do with golf; it's almost more like a hobby," Brooks Koepka says.

"I don't even know what golf-specific is," Alex Noren says. "It's like any other sport. You're trying to build a higher level of athleticism."

"I try to not train for golf in the gym," McIlroy says. "I may throw a medicine ball that I guess could imitate a golf swing—that's about it. I keep it really simple in the gym. I'm trying to get stronger."

The idea they're pushing back against is having your gym work mirror the sport you're playing—golf, in this case. It was a popular idea for a time, until many started to realize that rather than giving you the best of both worlds, it gave you the worst.

Swinging a golf club while kneeling on a Bosu ball, for instance, may look more golf-specific than a bench press, but unlike a bench press, it doesn't get you stronger, and it doesn't really improve your golf swing either.

"It's just busy work," says William Wayland, a trainer and consultant at the European Tour Performance Institute Performance Unit. "Golf training historically has been very sports therapy-led, with programs that look more like physical rehab. The way other sports have always done it is that you prepare in the basics—getting stronger, getting faster, more powerful. That's the job of the trainer."

In pragmatic terms, it means golfers, in an effort to get stronger, have gravitated towards the bigger, basic strength exercises. Movements like deadlifts, squats, push movements (like a bench press) and pull movements (like a pull-up)—these are called compound lifts, because they work multiple muscles at once.

"A Romanian deadlift, for instance—well, what's important for golf? Well, we know producing a lot of force through the hips is very important. A Romanian deadlift fits the bill because it's teaching my body how to produce a lot of force through the hips," Wayland says.

Players like McIlroy say they alternate light and heavy sessions with these lifts. Heavy to increase their strength, light to improve their ability to use that strength.

"I train systems," McIlroy says. "I do two strength sessions a week, two power sessions a week and one conditioning session. On the strength days, I do dumbbell presses. I do some squats. I'll do some more hinge patterns, like a trap bar deadlift. On the power days, that's medicine balls, box jumps, landmines, moving lighter loads, fast."

Keeping the weight heavy with lower reps increases strength while preventing golfers from getting too bulky. And when they do want to push it, how heavy are they going?

McIlroy was benching more than 250 pounds before moving to dumbbells. A light set for DeChambeau is 225 pounds.

"285 is my bench press record," Noren says. "But I'm old now. I go closer to 240 pounds."

Strength as a Longevity Tool

A cursory look at McIlroy's driving stats over the years reveals a statistical marvel.

In the 15 years since McIlroy's name first appeared on the SG: Off The Tee leaderboard, his combination of driving distance and accuracy has allowed him to accumulate a mind-bending 561-stroke advantage over the average tour player through that span. The only two players who come remotely close over that same period are Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson—both of whom stand more than half a foot taller than McIlroy.

But here's the stat that boggles the mind the most: McIlroy's cumulative Strokes Gained: Off The Tee from his first three full PGA Tour seasons is lower than his most recent three PGA Tour seasons. That means even though the players around him have gotten younger, more athletic, and enjoyed cutting-edge advancements from driver technology, fitness and analytics, McIlroy's advantage has grown.

This is in large part, he says, because of his strength work in the gym.

"If we look at the physical qualities that we lose the fastest as we age, they're also the ones that are most important for club head speed," says Mike Carroll, a trainer to multiple PGA Tour players and founder of the Fit For Golf app. "Starting in our 30s and accelerating into our 40s and 50s, we rapidly lose muscle, power, muscle strength, and muscle mass."

Lifting heavy can reverse those declines and has other benefits that can increase longevity.

"I've had hip issues over the years and the only time my hips get sore is when they get weak," McIlroy says. "When I don't squat, when I don't do my hip flexor exercises, that's when they get sore. They feel healthiest when they feel strong."

Carroll says he often sees amateur golfers shun the idea of lifting weights in favor of flexibility training precisely because they think it's better for the longer term. He says tour players can fall into this trap, but increasingly, they're learning that piling the weight on gives them the benefits of added flexibility, while staving off the longer-term strength declines.

"One of the biggest myths is that strength training will reduce your range of motion," Carroll says. "If you choose exercises where you're working through a challenging range of motion, that's essentially stretching with weights."

It's an approach more pros are gravitating towards. Just as lifting is part of the culture in baseball and football, it is increasing in golf, too. The first wave of adopters are finding an edge in the gym. It seems only a matter of time before the benefits of this approach for the current generation, become a prrequisite for the next.