It’s one-stop shopping for golfer’s game

Patty Curtiss is a big believer in one-stop shopping – especially for those in search of a better golf swing.

Which is why she decided to combine her interests in health, fitness and golf to become one of the nation’s most uniquely qualfied LPGA teaching professionals.

Curtiss, a Tacoma native who is currently teaching and consulting at Stoneridge Golf Resort in Blanchard and The Links Golf Club in Post Falls, recently founded her own company, Golf Health Pro, and advises golfers on swing techniques, course management, fitness, injury management and equipment selection.

She even conducts corporate team-building retreats with golf as her main focus.

“I like to think of it as one-stop shopping for golfers,” said Curtiss, who has contracted to work with college golf teams at UCLA, Washington, Oregon State and Texas A&M. “The instruction is very much a simple, grass-roots approach that is based on how I learned to play when I was young. But we’re adding the elements of understanding what the body can do, understanding what equipment is appropriate for different body types and putting it all together with that grass-roots instruction.

“I call it bridging the gap between golf instruction and conditioning.”

Curtiss’ resume is remarkable.

Following a splendid run as a junior golfer in the Pacific Northwest, she played collegiately at the University of New Mexico, where she won several tournament titles and earned masters degrees in both community health education and health care administration.

She is an LPGA member and instructor in the LPGA’s player development program. She currently serves as a volunteer official for USGA junior girls’ events and Washington’s team captain for the Girls’ Junior Americas Cup.

In addition, she teaches full-time during the winter at Palm Valley Country Club in Palm Desert, Calif., where she has access to a state-of-the art health club – complete with nine massage therapists and a spa – that she uses to help condition and rehabilitate her students.

She is often hired by parents of young golfers to fly to their hometowns, do performance evaluations and offer advice on matters of conditioning, injury prevention and injury rehabilitation, as well as swing techniques.

She began spending summers and conducting golf schools at Stoneridge two years ago and has lured several of her California-based clients there for instruction. And this summer, she decided to spend Thursdays and Saturdays at The Links, where she is doing complimentary consults and equipment checks as a way to make herself visible to even more potential clients.

I recently accepted her invitation to undergo a session on the practice range at The Links and came away with a new appreciation of how the body – good like Tiger’s and Ernie’s, or bad like mine – affects the golf swing. It made me feel better about my golf game, but borderline suicidal about my physical condition.

We started the session by doing a few simple stretching exercises, which was an absolute revelation. Until then, my warm-up routine had always involved grabbing three long irons from by bag and swinging them as hard as I could to break the calcium adhesions loose in my shoulders.

After the stretching, I took about 20 easy practice swings and then started hitting balls – but with about only 20 percent of my normal aggression.

In a matter of minutes, Curtiss had noticed that I had rounded shoulders, tight hips, a very flat swing plane, an abnormally high ball flight and a left foot that opened up and pointed out toward my target.

The swing plane and open stance, she said, were my way of compensating for my stooped shoulders, weak grip and lack of flexibility in my hips.

“You’re real tight on your left side,” she said, “and if you don’t have your toe turned out, you have nowhere to go. By doing that, it helps you get the momentum transferred a little easier.”

Curtiss also noticed that I have a tendency to lunge at the ball and “chase it” down the fairway.

Fortunately, she added, none of my swing faults or physical inadequacies were all that unusual or incurable. But she prescribed no end-all remedy.

Instead, she recommended a set of three simple exercises I could do three times a day to improve my posture and increase the flexibility in my hips. We also experimented with playing the ball back a little further in my stance and creating a mental cadence that would slow down my swing – especially with my short irons.

“If we had more time, there are a lot of things we could work on, but we need to keep it simple, for now,” she said. “There’s a lot of stuff out there, in magazine articles and instruction videos, telling people where they should be as a golfer. But you’re getting improvement right now just with what you’ve learned and what we’ve discovered in a very short time. So just go with that and avoid the temptation of trying to get to where a magazine says you out to be.

“You cannot physically do a lot of the things that Tour players do or what those articles tell you to do. My goal is to help people understand what they’re physically capable of doing. I want to connect people to golf for a lifetime, and if what they’re doing is trying to compare themselves to an unrealistic model, like Ernie Els they’re going to get frustrated and quit the game.”

Curtiss, who will be doing her golf schools at Stoneridge and conducting lessons, physical evaluations and club fittings at The Links throughout the month of August, will return to Palm Valley Country Club and her full-service golf school later this fall.

But she will continue to travel the country, speaking to corporate groups, promoting junior golf and consulting with golfers on how to improve everything from their posture to their golf-related injuries.

All in one stop.