Article published July 30, 2007
FIRST OF TWO PARTS
Machine-made golfers
University of Toledo professor works on developing a way to build better players
By JENNI LAIDMAN
BLADE SCIENCE WRITER
Vijay Goel doesn't golf. Never even tried it. But if you want to improve your game, he may be your man.
The University of Toledo professor holds a plastic spine and shows how it twists and turns and compresses during movement. This is his expertise: the spine and its operations.
Alan Schultheis is a businessman and avid golfer. Twelve years ago, he lived in the golfers' paradise of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Many of Mr. Schultheis' neighbors worked most of their lives to have their piece of land on the back nine. Now retired, they wanted to golf golf golf.
Their bodies, however, weren't cooperating.
"A lot of them were unable to hit the ball very far anymore. If they played, by the end of the round, their backs were sore. They couldn't play again for another four, five days,'' Mr. Schultheis said.
The memory stayed with Mr. Schultheis long after he moved back to Connecticut. He began envisioning a machine to strengthen the muscles from the mid-thigh to the mid-chest, the so-called core muscles that seemed weak in older golfers.It wasn't exactly his niche. He's spent his career with MasterCard, American Express, and AT&T doing marketing and business development. Still, he tried to find experts to help him create a machine. East Coast universities and businesses gave him the brush-off or had their own ideas about what he ought to do.
Finally, he turned to the American Society for Mechanical Engineers. They recommended one man: Vijay Goel.
Vijay Goel in the biomechanical lab at the University of Toledo.
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THE BLADE/JETTA FRASER
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They hit it off instantly. After a phone conversation, Mr. Schultheis flew to Toledo, and the process of developing a golf fitness machine began. The professor's lack of golfing expertise proved no difficulty.
"I loved it,'' Mr. Goel said. "It tells me that it helps sometimes to come from outside without knowing too much. Then you really have some innovation. Our minds were like clean slates.''
Although, he acknowledged, two of the team members, John Jaegly, laboratory supervisor for the mechanical engineering department, and graduate student David Dick, who worked most directly with the product's development, are both golfers.
Now, a company in Utah is manufacturing the fourth prototype of a patented machine. When those prototypes are complete at the end of September, they will be distributed to a number of centers, including the University of Toledo, for further testing. By next year, Mr. Schultheis says, the new machine will be on the market.
The equipment enters a field crowded with golfer improvement programs.
There are programs that analyze one's swing, and programs to improve strength. There are programs that diagnose movement patterns, and programs that work to strengthen specific weaknesses. Name the program, and you can find golfers who swear by it.
What you probably won't find is published scientific data.
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