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Most golfers subsist on a diet of hope and delusion. None of us are as good as we think we could be, yet we always believe a breakthrough is within reach

A few years ago, Golf Digest’s Alex Myers embarked on a dream assignment that was meant to force the issue: the goal was to get better quickly with the help of a series of experts, and to chronicle the whole thing in words and on video. In a 12-week training program through the Golf Performance Center in Ridgefield, Conn., Alex worked with a team of golf instructors, trainers, mental coaches, and clubfitters who sought to maximize every part of his game.



The results were hard to miss. At age 40, Alex added more than 30 yards of distance, got down to a 4.1 index (from a 7.8), and dominated his annual buddies golf trip that he talks about way too much around the office. Along the way, Alex even bought into areas like golf fitness and the mental game—stuff he used to roll his eyes at, but now recognizes as pivotal to better golf.

Granted, the program was time-consuming, and costly enough that if Alex was paying for the whole thing himself … well, he probably wouldn’t do it. It’s unreasonable to expect most of us to pursue a similarly aggressive makeover, yet his experience still illuminated the ways we could all get far more out of our games than we currently do. It’s a concept I plan to explore in greater depth in the next year, and I figured one place to start is asking Alex what he learned after pushing himself, and what clues might be there for the rest of us.