During the past 10 weeks, I’ve been on what the kids these days call a “weight loss journey.” It all started back in February when I went to Bandon Dunes.

On day one, we played the Bandon Dunes course — and it was everything I imagined it would be. As you probably know, you have to walk the course there. You can hire a caddy to carry your clubs, but I opted for a pull cart. You’d think that wouldn’t be a big deal, but I wasn’t walking courses back then, and by the end of the round, I was surprisingly tired.

The next morning, I woke up with a stiff lower back. We played Bandon Trails that day, and it took me six holes just to loosen up. By the end of that round, I was completely spent. That’s when I decided: if I’m ever going to do another golf trip like this, I need to do something about my fitness and my back.

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Ever since I had been diagnosed with tarsal tunnel syndrome in 2018, I have gone through a long journey of recovery and further injury prevention. A big part of this is in the shoes I wear daily. I started putting insoles for arch support in all of my shoes and I’m very picky about what types of shoes I wear, including in golf. A few months ago I started to walk every round rather than take a cart, which was great for my overall health but it meant I needed to make sure I can find shoes I can play well in, but also be comfortable enough to stand and walk in for several hours. I think if you walk the course, the average 18 hole round is about 6 miles worth of walking. All of that really led me to look for the right golf shoes.

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Recently, I signed up with golf instructor Chris Ryan’s golf membership where you can view his videos, lessons, and even get individual lessons from him. I’ve always enjoyed Chris Ryan’s YouTube videos and in fact, his were the only ones that have ever helped my golf game. Whenever you have an issue with your golf swing, it’s tempting to look at videos on YouTube to see how to fix those issues, but more often than not, the videos you will watch will not be applicable to your swing. I think that’s why watching YouTube golf instruction videos can really harm your game. For some reason though, Chris’ videos always seem to be super relevant.

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After getting fit at Club Champion a couple of months ago, I didn’t really walk away feeling great about moving forward with the purchase. I felt like there were a couple of issues with that fitting. I felt like the club fitter put me into shafts that seemed a little expensive. I was looking at somewhere near $1700 for the new set, and he fit me into Aerotech SteelFiber shafts, which seemed okay but they were expensive and I generally wasn’t hitting the ball great that day. I just didn’t walk away feeling that impressed.

Then I got an email from a local indoor golf simulator business saying they were doing free Srixon fittings. I thought why not and booked a fitting session. I was playing Srixon Z565 irons and it had been 8 years or so since I bought them. I don’t play enough for the grooves to be worn out or anything, but I also didn’t really get a real fitting when I bought those so I wanted to see if the outcome of this fitting would be similar to the one I did at Club Champion.

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This past weekend, I had the pleasure and privilege of visiting the Bandon Dunes golf resort in Bandon, Oregon. Bandon was at the top of my bucket list, and somewhere I had only heard amazing things about. A friend and I were able to do some research and find that although it is notoriously difficult to book (there is a lottery system), there are times of the year that are less popular and thus much easier to book. Of those times, February is known as the hidden secret. For many reasons, this was the ideal time for us to go.

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