Last month, the PGA Tour announced Cleveland Clinic as the official healthcare provider of the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions through 2032. Cleveland Clinic clinicians debuted on-site at last week’s Cognizant Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, offering players easy access to skin, blood, heart and muscular tests.
“These are things separately that a player could get in their hometown but these are people who are on the road all the time and it’s really hard to make all those appointments and stay on top of their stuff,” said Andy Levinson, PGA Tour senior vice president of tournament administration. “So we’re bringing it to them.”
The PGA Tour’s partnership with Cleveland Clinic, through which the Ohio-based medical center will offer on- and off-site health and wellness services, is part of the tour’s larger effort to focus on the health of its constantly-on-the-move players. It’s complementary to the tour’s Player Performance Centers, which provide players access to training equipment, physical therapy and recovery options. The trailers travel to almost all domestic, mainland PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions events, covering 30,000-40,000 miles each year.
According to Levinson, about 80 percent of the players in the field each week utilize the performance centers. In his opinion, the one-time belief that golfers aren’t athletes no longer has any truth to it. Just use the eye test.
“Our players today are much, much different from players 20 years ago, even 10 years ago,” Levinson said. “The level of physical preparation that they have is almost equal to the amount of time they spend on the golf course and on the practice range. The world’s best golfers should have all the same resources that a professional sports team has.”
The idea for Player Performance Centers was conceived in the 1980s by orthopedic surgeon Dr. Frank Jobe, who was best known for pioneering Tommy John surgery. Jobe, an avid golfer and an orthopedic consultant to the PGA Tour who died in 2014, believed there needed to be some kind of mobile service for player fitness and recovery needs.
“We travel from city to city, from facility to facility, and most of the golf courses that we play at don’t have sufficient fitness facilities,” Levinson said. “They don’t have space for the type of treatment that a touring professional golfer requires.”
“We convened a group of players who were frequent users of our facilities and had provided us a lot of feedback over the years to help us design new facilities. Those trailers are what we have today.” – Andy Levinson
The first traveling Performance Center hit the road in 1985 as a single trailer and soon expanded to two: a fitness facility and a physical therapy/chiropractic facility. The most recent significant update came in 2019.
“We convened a group of players who were frequent users of our facilities and had provided us a lot of feedback over the years to help us design new facilities,” Levinson said. “Those trailers are what we have today.”
Each trailer became larger and can expand to about 1,000 square feet. One is staffed by two physical therapists and a chiropractor and equipped with stretching and recovery equipment. The other is staffed by two athletic trainers and houses strength- and endurance-training equipment.
The PGA Tour is always looking to optimize and personalize the facilities for the players. For example, in 2019 the fitness facility had a cable machine, which golfers use to build strength, power, stability and balance. However, cable machines take up a lot of space. Because the sides of each facility fold up when the trailers hit the road, the only place for the machine was bolted down in the middle, meaning it could get in the way of other players working out.
“We identified a piece of equipment that could actually do the same work but it can be attached to a wall on a track,” Levinson said. “And so now we have cables throughout the facility but they are bolted to the sides. It’s created so much more space.”
Two years ago, the PGA Tour added another element to its player health and fitness program: the Recovery Center, a 900-square-foot traveling tent that has three cold plunges, an infrared sauna and other recuperative equipment.
Improving its players’ health and wellness is clearly a priority of the PGA Tour, so when Cleveland Clinic proposed a partnership it was a no-brainer.
“They have a ton of experience in working with professional athletes, not just the Cleveland-based athletes but they work with a lot of teams and a lot of leagues and a lot of player associations,” Levinson said. “And to have all of that expertise at our fingertips now is just incredible.”
Cleveland Clinic is the official healthcare provider for baseball’s Cleveland Guardians and basketball’s Cleveland Cavaliers and Cleveland Charge. In the joint press release with the PGA Tour, Cleveland Clinic CEO and president Dr. Tom Mihalkevic explained why the new partnership is exciting from the clinic’s perspective.
“We have a remarkable opportunity to bring Cleveland Clinic’s expertise directly to the athletes who already push the limits of human performance,” Mihaljevic said. “Our teams will deliver integrated multi-disciplinary and performance-focused care that supports player longevity, resilience, and recovery. This partnership allows us to apply leading-edge insights, elevate wellness across the tour, and advance our shared commitment to helping individuals perform at their highest potential on and off the course.”
The Cleveland Clinic clinicians are available again this week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and will travel to two more PGA Tour events this season, the Rocket Classic and the RSM Classic. They will also travel to two Korn Ferry Tour events and two PGA Tour Champions events. The tour will look to add the clinicians to more tournaments in the future, Levinson said.
“Not only does [Cleveland Clinic] provide us with tremendous access to their expertise, but they are also very interested in data and the collection of athletic data to help improve athlete performance and injury prevention. It’s really complementary and additive to our program,” Levinson said.