These simple moves will protect your back (and not cost you yards)

This is the last installment in a three-part series Bamberger In Brief A series exploring different aspects of the phrase no golfer wants to say but most golfers end up with: I can’t play today — my back is out. This series features points and insights from a recent GOLF.com interview with Dr. Tom LaFountain, the PGA Tour’s director of chiropractic services, has for the past 27 years and counting seen some of the most famous backs in golf history up close and personal.

Part I: Bursting Bags, Bursting Backs | Part II: JT and the Bad Back Band

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From age 35 on, people, on average, lose 1 percent of their flexibility every year, said Dr. Tom LaFountain, PGA Tour director of chiropractic services. That’s true if you’re Tommy Fleetwood, 35, or Tommy “Two Gloves” Gainey, who turned 35 in 2010, the year he won three times on what was then called the Nationwide Tour. Gainey, now 50, has remained versatile enough to be a successful player on the Championship tour. Speculation is that Fleetwood will return to Birkdale, England, when he reaches the century mark.

LaFountain knows the true power of his relationship with the PGA Tour players who come to see him and his teammates: They’re not looking for career-long advice. They want something that will allow them to bend without pain now.

For the rest of us, LaFountain has some practical and simple advice, especially for golfers on the other side of 35: Let your front heel go higher on your backswing. Ben Hogan did and so did Jack Nicklaus. John Daly and Phil Mickelson, alike. This is exactly what Brandel Chamblee has been preaching for half a decade now. For years, in the pre-Tiger era, golfers were offered a powerful front heel image that allowed for a long, loose swing, creating more speed through the swing, while taking pressure off the back.

The image is from an era when golf shoes still had traditional spikes, and this was the image: At the top of the swing, the front heel was not down. Now there were, at the top of your back swing, four small holes in the ground where your spikes had been. After getting your hands as high as possible, start your descent by driving your front heel down, so that the spikes return to where they came from, filling those little holes again.

“You can’t talk to Tour players about anything like that,” LaFountain said. “They have whole teams dedicated to their swing mechanics. But I work with a lot of beginners, junior golfers and really good clubbers. And if they have back problems, I try that on them and they always report that heel lifts reduce pressure on the back and don’t cause distance loss.”

In addition, LaFountain offers this advice: Go online and look for exercise programs dedicated to improving flexibility and strength. He is a fan of the different programs offered by TPI, the Titleist Performance Institute, but he doesn’t recommend those programs to anyone mainly because what works for one person may not work for another.

“Actually, there are many good ones,” he said. “You try one and if you like it, if you get a benefit from it, stick with it, and if you don’t, try something else. There is no one size fits all.”

At some point in your reading, you will come across a phrase chest strength. Another way of saying, “The background is beautiful.” For Tiger Woods, Justin Thomas, Tom LaFountain and any golfer reading this: A worthy goal.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com