Chicago Golf Report

Our guest this episode is Nick Randall who is a strength and conditioning coach who works with PGA tour players. He is also a brand ambassador for GravityFit, which is a revolutionary exercise and rehabilitation system that has become popular with golfers and golf instructors. In this interview with Nick, we learn: * How your lifestyle could be impacting your ability to properly swing the golf club * The primary reason why golfers become injured * Why top PGA Tour professionals use the GravityFit TPro * Why losing radius in the golf swing can cost more than just power * How golfers in Chicago can improve their golf swing and rotation 12 months a year * The secret to avoiding most musculoskeletal injuries * A unique method to avoid chipping yips Interviewer: Walter Lis. Running Time: 18:08Click here to download an MP3 file. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.   CHICAGO GOLF REPORT – Can you tell us about the genesis of GravityFit? NICK RANDALL – The background of GravityFit is really interesting and I think it’s quite different to lots of other brands and products. We operate in a similar space of postural training and specifically golf movement patterns. The background is essentially Gravity Fitness standard on the back of a 30-year academic career by Dr. Karen Richardson. Her research identified the need to load the body in a certain way in order to stimulate the deep muscle system to work properly. If that deep muscle system isn’t working properly, posture tends to suffer. We get into a more and more hunched forward, head position, rounded up the back rounded shoulders position, pelvis and spine become unstable and our major joints become unstable. Exposing us to the risk of injury. Her research pointed to the fact that we don’t get in our current lifestyles enough, what we call axial load or gravity sensory information. Basically, we don’t get the stimulus, that this deep muscle system needs in order to activate and hold us in good posture and hold their joints nice and stable. At the end of her career she partnered with a couple of people in order to develop some exercise tools that would address that need and that’s where GravityFit the brand and the performance and exercise tools was born out of. Now how that came to be involved with the golf side of things is that Dr. Richardson is Australian and she was presenting around Australia and one of the things that she presented at was a golf Australia training camp of which I was actually a part of. I was doing strength and conditioning for Golf Australia and there was a whole bunch of the best coaches and trainers and physios that are involved in golf at this conference, at this training camp. She presented these ideas and they really blew us away and they provided certainly for me and for the physios and the strength coaches an answer to a lot of the questions that we were really struggling to work out. Questions such as why are players getting injured, why are they not moving in the way we want them to, why they’ve got such poor postural control? Until we started using the early prototypes of these tools that Dr. Richardson had just completed the production of, we found amazing results with these really good elite players in a very, very short space of time. We were able to put the tools on these guys, give them some simple cues and their posture was improving really quickly,

A nearly 30-year veteran of the golf business, Jason Hiland is the founder of Diamond Tour Golf and Hurricane Golf. His latest venture, Sub 70 Golf, offers premium golf clubs using a factory direct model.

Our guest this episode is Josh Doxtator who is the general manager of The Golf Club at Harbor Shores. Located in Benton Harbor, Michigan, The Golf Club at Harbor Shores is host of the 2020 KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship. In this interview with Josh, we learn: * The benefits of working with the LPGA Tour in Green Bay * What it takes to be a top destination golf facility * Why hosting the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship benefits the neighboring communities * The importance of creating an exceptional golf experience * What he’s learned from playing 300 of the top golf courses in North America * Why Harbor Shores is a great choice for Chicago golfers Interviewer: Walter Lis. Running Time: 17:25Click here to download an MP3 file. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. CHICAGO GOLF REPORT – Can you talk a little bit about your new role at Harbor Shores? JOSH DOXTATOR – My role as a general manager is basically overseeing all operations here at Harbor Shores from golf course maintenance to the food and beverage as well as the golf operations side. I’ve always been very much excited about opportunities to take a brand and really develop it and execute the service experience to guests and members and make a name for itself and really make a splash in the destination market. And then I think from the overall vision of the ownership here, they want to be the top Midwest destination and my job moving forward is focusing on providing the absolute best product from a golf course perspective and a food and beverage perspective, but then also delivering the experience that goes along with that. CHICAGO GOLF REPORT – Can you talk a little bit about where you came from before Harbor Shores? JOSH DOXTATOR – My career actually started in the Phoenix Arizona area, I helped open up property called Trilogy Golf Club at Vistancia in 2004 and it was part of a bigger community development … much larger than the Harbor Shores development, but still the same kind of feel and uniqueness to it. But really helped from the positioning of that golf course to create a different environment through that service and through some of the different things that we were doing on site. I think 2008, 2009, we had a five star rating from Golf Digest. We were one of only 24 in North America to receive that designation and that with a lot of, that was basically providing all the things that I talked about: providing an exceptional experience and some of the best conditions that you can play. After my time there, almost 11 years, I took the position as general manager at Thornberry Creek in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the official golf course of the Green Bay Packers and the ownership there was very much wanting to take what they had there from a property and turn it into a destination. Over the course of four and a half years, I rebranded the property, saw a lot of success in some select markets, mainly Chicago and Milwaukee and Minneapolis. The next step was how do we showcase this to the world? And ended up sanctioning an LPGA tour event which was brand new on the schedule. We underwent an extensive renovation to the club to get ready for the LPGA Tour, but then also working with our event management group that we brough...

Mark Broadie’s breakthrough "strokes gained" analytics have been used by much of the golf world including Golf Channel, FOX Sports, TaylorMade and many top instructors and players.

Bert Coghill is the Director of golf operations at Silver Lake Country Club in Orland Park, which is a 45-hole daily fee facility the Coghill family have owned and operated since the early 1930s.