GOLF:After a 'horrible' pelvic injury, Simon Dyson is making an impressive comeback, writes PHILIP REID
IN THE old days, the notion that professional players would actually hit the gym or commit to strenuous physical regimes was, with a couple of notable exceptions, a rather fanciful one. These days, though, the vast majority of tour players have personal trainers, routines and the sort of workout schedule that wouldn’t be out of place among Olympic athletes.
Take Simon Dyson. The Englishman – winner of the Irish Open at Killarney last year – had one of the toughest regimes on the circuit, to such an extent that his commitment to the gym and roadwork backfired when he sustained a stress fracture in his right pelvis earlier this season and has only recently retained fitness. Rather timely, given his defence of a cherished tour title.
Dyson missed a large chunk of May and June (missing out on the Players championship, the BMW PGA and the Wales Open) after sustaining the injury when including daily six-mile runs in his routine. “I had a stress fracture in my right pelvis. The fluid was pushing the sacroiliac joint into my sciatic nerve which was then going down my right leg. I couldn’t put any weight on it at all, it was really painful . . . it was horrible, it really was,” he recalled.
The upshot was that Dyson was forced to take five weeks off and has changed his fitness programme, including more swimming and cycling in place of long runs. “I want to be fit coming down the stretch, so I want to get fit in other ways, more cardio stuff . . . I wake up in the morning and it takes a good 40 minutes in the gym to loosen up. But it’s getting there. Hopefully in a week or two, it might be back to where it can be.”
Perhaps the Irish Open has come a tad too soon in his recovery process, but a tied-12th finish in last week’s BMW International Open in Germany would indicate Dyson’s headed in the right direction. And, as someone who grew up playing links golf and a former winner of the Alfred Dunhill Links, he is eager to play competitively over the Dunluce layout.
“Links golf kind of suits my eye. If I’m keeping with the form that I’ve got at the minute and hole a few putts, I like it. I like it a lot . . . links is my favourite type of golf.
“This is more about manoeuvring the ball, which someone like Darren Clarke is fantastic at. And I think that’s probably the best aspect of my game. I can hit pretty much any shot. The high draw. The low draw. The high cut. The low cut. I like to visualise the shot . . . it’s nice to come back to how golf was first played.”
Not so much a case of beware the injured golfer, as beware the almost-injury-free one.
