Rapaport is so good on Simmons podcast that I'm watching Kiss of Death.

Balls.

Attitude.

Direction.

Of all the tilting things in sports listening to golf commentators criticize Rory mcilroy for being a gymrat and being able to squat 2x and being fit tops the list. Just listened to Nick Faldo say Rory should go old school and forgo the gym to not lose his "touch".

This is pinnacle old athlete jealousy

How much self awareness do you have to lack to not notice the correlation of fitness with all these course records being broken by tiger and Rory and day and Spieth? Do they really not realize that these guys are destroying jack Nicklaus and Arnold palmers scoring records on courses that have been EXTENDED to challenge them more?

But Sam Snead was the GOAT ball striker!

You know what's more +ev than the perfect ball strike approach to a 370 yds par 4?

But Lee Trevino could hit a 60-yard slice to the pin!

I know when I play a sport that involves violently rotating and twisting my spine and hips, I want the weakest back and hips possible to prevent injury.

makes sense.

I mean props to tiger for leading a movement of strong core workouts in golf. Lol really to anyone who doesn't follow suit

They literally discussed if Rory having a strong core is a deficit to him as a golfer...

Cvig, this is exactly why almost everyone in the know pays zero attention to any golf pundits- They're basically just like pundits in any other sport or politics or whatever...spouting off the same old tired tropes and controversial #hottakes... just garbage. David Feherty is the only one who's self-aware.

What's even stranger is that these ex pros who understand golf swings still don't get that "touch" or putts and shots around green are generally arms/wrists while full swing power is majorly generated by core strength. There's no reason Rory's power in full swing would make his touch fall apart...

A SS guru like kidcolin could have no golf experience and probably quickly be taught how to hit long and would have no correlation on how his "touch" was on greens

precisely

edit - the golf swing is a little more complex than you're letting on - KC would be a heavy favorite vs. anyone else to be able to quickly learn to hit long... but there's a lot that goes into hitting the golf ball a long ways that isn't easily learnable to the vast vast majority of people, even remarkably fit ones

But it makes no sense. They've played golf at the highest level? They know what generates power in a swing.

Well yes I'm over simplifying. But core strength is the most important element in distance. There are obviously advantages like height and precision and etc but there's no greater starting advantage than just being strong. It's a cheat code to distance and you can build around it regardless of other physical advantages

Do they though?

At my 1st job I learned that Sprite cleans "every mother ****ing thing"

I drive 400y already bros.

Part of what people of all walks fail to understand about strength is it turns high effort activities into less high effort activities. For instance, given two cyclists riding the same speed on the same terrain on the same gear, one who squats 400 and one who squats 200.. the former expends less energy on each pedal stroke.

My hypothesis as to why Tiger never missed fairways while still having a long drive during his prime is simply because he was stronger than everyone else. Those drive lengths weren't him giving it all he's got. It was prob in the 80-90% range somewhere. It's just his length ceiling was above most other pros. Obviously this advantage was on top of him also being a technical master.

(Tiger missed fairways at an exceedingly high rate while in his prime; a huge part of his game was being able to recover from misses better than anyone else...and a main component of this was his strength, being able to hit from deep rough and tough lies)

On another random note, guys, I've got Rumours as the greatest album of all time and by a decent margin.

schu, don't ruin my narrative bro.

Another reason why Sierra Mist sucks.

Your narrative should've done more squats imo

The bigger issue is correlation between core strength and "touch". There's no correlation. Jason day is one of the longer guys on tour and one of the better putters. Just different strokes/skill sets.

Spieth has plenty of power (less than day) and also puts well. lol when people say Spieth is a throwback. He's top 1/3ish in key distance stats almost always and strong as ****. He's just an excellent putter when on so gets the "no power" stigma because he doesn't carry it 300

#1 my god.

Top 1/3-ish is debatable; characterizing Spieth as having average-ish distance and unworldly mid-short-game is probably accurate.

You're misguided a bit in your approach to this argument as you're 100% correct that building strength is incredibly important

Short game touch is much more important than most laypeople think.

Tiger 18 WGC wins

Second place: Geoff Ogilvy with 3

Yeah maybe he's just top 1/2? I can't look up now but I thought his iron distance was way higher than most people thought. And he's obviously very fit. Short game is important but the World Top 10 is like 8 elite long guys, so hard to really say that doesn't hold precedence