This week in Bamberger Briefly, a wee three-part series over three days that explores different aspects of a phrase no golfer wants to say but most golfers eventually will: Can’t play today — my back went out. This series culls nuggets and insights from a recent GOLF.com interview with Dr. Tom LaFountain, PGA Tour director of chiropractic services, who over the past 27 years and counting has seen some of the most famous backs in golf up close and personal.
Today, Part I: Explosive Swings + Exploding Purses = Exploding Backs
Tomorrow, Part II: JT and the Bad Back Band
Saturday, Part III: Your Back, Your Choice
***
Part I: Explosive Swings + Exploding Purses = Exploding Backs
When Tom LaFountain first got on Tour as a chiropractor, in the late 1990s, after years tending to Olympic athletes, he was amazed to see Tom Watson, Jay Haas and Bernhard Langer still playing regularly. As they got into their late 40s, each of them had the expectation of turning 50, getting on the Champions tour while continuing to play in some Tour events and to generally keep on keeping on. And they did.
That trio, among many other pros with familiar surnames, loved golf, loved competing and had bodies that held up. Yes, scores of these Tour players went in for replacement parts at 40,000 miles, and 80 and 100. Many of them had weeks here and there when they were on the sidelines for rest and recovery. But they never experienced career-ending back issues. They all had the ability and willingness to take something off the speed of their swings as needed, get around for a while some other way, preserve their backs, live to golf another week. The mid-tournament WD was not a thing. Most weeks, there wasn’t one. For one thing, quitting showed weakness. For another, the players didn’t come all this way to not cash a check.
Early on, LaFountain observed that 85 percent of the players who entered Tour fitness trailers with pain had lower back issues. Over the past 27 years, that percentage has not changed. What has changed, LaFountain says, is the numbers of players in discomfort, or worse. The issues are deeper. It used to be muscles and joints. Now it’s muscles, joints — and discs. And LaFountain knows why: The swing has changed.
“The swing is much faster, there is more torque and rotation, there is much more pressure on the lower back,” he said in a recent interview. “There’s an arms race for distance that didn’t used to exist. Look at a guy like Jimmy Fuyrk. He’d say, ‘Yeah, there are guys hitting it 320, but I max out at 280, 290. So I’ll figure it out from there.’ And he played forever.’” That mindset is dead, LaFountain said. Last rites were read by various Trackman boxes up-and-down Tour driving ranges.
Of the threesome of lifers cited at the top here, Tom Watson had a body that would not quit, Jay Haas had a unique straight-up, tension-free backswing and Bernhard Langer lived in the gym, lifting some with light weights — and stretching more. At 52 he looked 32. He hadn’t gained five pounds. He played so much his body didn’t know what it was like not to play.
As it played out, all three of them had pro careers that were still remarkably productive at their 40-year marks. The same is true for an older generation of pros, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Hale Irwin, Billy Casper, Chi Chi Rodriguez among them. (You could go on and on from there.) You could create a similar list of younger players, including Fred Funk, Colin Montgomerie and Tom Lehman. And, younger yet, Zach Johnson, Henrik Stenson, Stewart Cink, all in their early 50s, and Phil Mickelson and Furyk, both 55.
They are the end of the line, LaFountain says. Rory McIlroy, 36, who withdrew from the Bay Hill event a couple of weeks ago with a tweaked back, is already saying there is no chance he’ll still be playing professional golf in his 50s. Tiger Woods, who is 50, has barely played since 2020. A career that goes on and on and on, in the Watson-Haas-Langer tradition, is not even an aspiration, per LaFountain. “They want to make it now,” LaFountain said. “They’re playing for so much money, and distance is so paramount, that they will swing as hard as they possibly can to make as much money in a short period of time as they possibly can, and be set up for the rest of their lives. The lure of making more now they compromise career length to make the money now.”
In 1995, the year before Woods turned pro, the total purse for the PGA Tour season was $66 million. Greg Norman was the leading money winner, earning $1.6 million. In 2025, the total purse was $565 million. Scottie Scheffler made $19.5 million, just on the course. Lee Hodges finished 94th on the money list and made $1.6 million. The mentality, LaFountain said, is make it while you can. That is, make as much as you can in the shortest time possible.
“That’s especially true for the players from overseas,” LaFountain said. “Their families are thousands of miles away, their friends, the lives they know best. It can be lonely, playing here. But [outside of a LIV invite] there’s nowhere else in the world they can make this kind of money. If they win, great. But if they don’t they’re still making great money.” The closer you are to the green after one shot, on every par-4 and par-5 hole you play, the more money you will make. That means swinging hard, the lower body winding up against the upper body.
Something has to give.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
