Gaithersburg Facility Offers All the Tools To Get Your Game, and Your Body, Into Shape
By Ryan Mink
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, May 4, 2007
Going to Clubgolf is like visiting the doctor.
First, you're given a clipboard asking for your medical history and your golf history. Then there's the most important question: What do you want to accomplish? It's almost like your doctor asking, "So, what's wrong with you?"
The answer invariably differs for every person. But in the end, like any doctor, Clubgolf can cure just about any ill.
Mark Kahan, a 59-year old Silver Spring resident, wanted to have any kind of activity without pain. Ron Serabian, a 55-year-old from Potomac, needed lessons to fix his "butt-ugly" game, as he described it. Bobby Smith, a 42-year old Germantown resident, wants to play professionally.
"There are other places you can go all around the country where someone will look at you physically," Clubgolf owner Max Shevitz said. "There are other places you can go where you can get golf lessons. There are very few places you can go where they have the indoor facility we offer here. There's no other place around where you can do all three."
The Clubgolf Performance Center, located a long par 5 from Interstate 270 in Gaithersburg, offers golfers the chance to know exactly what's wrong with their body and their game, then gives them the means to fix them using high-tech devices and a qualified staff.
And like visiting the doctor, there's going to be all kinds of language that even the most skilled golfer may not understand. After all, Charles Howell III, Padraig Harrington, Jason Gore and Bo Van Pelt didn't go there just to get a second opinion.
"There's so much future in this place," Smith said.
After filling out the required paperwork, Day 1 at Clubgolf turns into a physical diagnosis. But not before they indulge you with hitting a few balls.
Strapped into a sensor-laden vest like a test rat and put in an electromagnetic shield, the golf pros map every direction you're moving in, from how far your hips sway to how high your backstroke is, producing a line graph of your stroke.
This exercise, performed right at the start, is used for the gruesome before-and-after shot. This is how bad you came in, and you'll see it over and over as sort of gratification for how far you improve, even by the end of the second day.
"It's psychological! Holy smokes," Serabian said as he watched side-by-side video of his first cuts compared with his second-day stroke. "You should have been here an hour ago! It was butt ugly."
The medical aspect of the day continues as Tyler Ferrell, the club's director of fitness, bends your body to see just what it can do, but more important what it cannot do. All this seems a bit silly just for golf, but the reason is simple: Not everyone has the flexibility of Tiger Woods, so why should we all mirror his swing? It's just not possible for most golfers to achieve that, and trying to do so only throws off your stroke.
Therefore, Clubgolf focuses on improving your body just as much as your swing. The fitness staff passes its findings onto its own golf professionals, or your personal golf pro if you have one, to let them know what to work on.
The average age of Clubgolf's 530 members is 49 1/2 , all of whom pay between $1,500 and $2,500 for a year's membership, Shevitz said. For many, getting in shape is just as useful to their games as swinging a club.
"That's what we're trying to accomplish, to both make them better golfers and prepare their bodies so golf is not going to be painful for them," Shevitz said.
The second day is the fun part, where golfers are handed the toys. Besides the three-dimensional motion-tracking system, which cost $20,000, there are launch monitors, where a camera takes two extremely quick pictures of the ball to determine its launch angle, ball speed and spin. Then there is the elevated performance platform, which tilts and turns to create any possible shot. Follow that up with a session in Clubgolf's indoor sand bunker and then to the crushed-stone putting green.
There isn't one part of your game that you can't work on. But not all at once, of course.
"We're not trying to solve everything in one day," club pro Brendon Post said. "We focus on different things each time that will improve your game."
Serabian came to Clubgolf with a 10 handicap -- on each hole, he quipped. He told the athletic trainers that he just wanted to survive a golf trip to Myrtle Beach, S.C., and now laughs that he's living to talk about it.
After each shot he took on his second day, he looked at the video replay as Post told him what he did wrong. Starting in late March he was able to do the same thing outside, as Clubgolf hauled its equipment to Blue Mash Golf Course in Laytonsville.
Smith, who works in the medical field, visits Clubgolf every day before work for one to two hours. After joining five years ago, about right after it opened, Smith says he plans to join the Nationwide Tour in two years and the Senior Tour when he's 50.
"People can just come in and work over and over and over on something," he said, standing in the sand bunker. "Because I practice here, I have so much confidence that when I get into a situation I can get out. If I could stay here all day, believe me I would."
Shevitz interrupted to tell Smith that it was time for him to leave for work.
"Oh, yeah, off to save lives," Smith said.
But first he visited his own doctor. After all, saving his game is a whole lot more fun.
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