It used to be that golfers didn’t have much interest in working out and building muscles. According to Cape Elizabeth chiropractor and three-handicapper, Dr. John Hayes, they were afraid that the extra bulk would be detrimental to the swing.

But when Tiger Woods came along, with his V-shaped upper body and linebacker shoulders, all of that changed. Now Hayes is trying to capitalize on the fitness movement that is sweeping through not just the PGA Tour, but also country clubs and municipal courses.

“Most people have swing faults and they cannot correct the swing faults by just doing drills. They have to correct the body first,” said Hayes, whose son, John IV played on Cape’s state championship winning golf team. “So we talk about how to test the body to find out why somebody can’t do a particular thing.

“It might be a weakness in a muscle. It might be a restriction of a joint. It might be a joint being hyper-mobile. So I do a little bit of body work and then we prescribe some fitness exercises to try to correct the body so they can swing the club better.”

Hayes first became interested in golf-specific exercise training about 20 years ago at around the same time that a California doctor named Frank Jobe – known for pioneering “Tommy John” surgery – began experimenting as well.

“What they did is they hooked these golfers up to EMG machines, sticking needles into certain muscles to find out which muscles controlled the golf swing,” said Hayes. “They were already doing this with pitchers, so they did it with golfers. I think that was around 1985 or ’88, something like that. It’s just blossomed from there.”

Well, kind of.

Hayes will conduct two fitness clinics at this weekend’s Portland Golf Expo (Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Holiday Inn by the Bay) like he has done for what he estimates to be the last 10 years, but golfers are still getting used to his ideas.

“What I’m trying to do here in Portland – and it’s very hard to do – is to get people to understand that to play better golf you have to exercise,” said Hayes. “But people don’t understand that they need to have their bodies analyzed to find out those weaknesses. People tell me, ‘Just give me the exercises and I’ll do them.'”

Ideally, Hayes would like to work in conjunction with golf pros. So, a golfer would go get his or her swing analyzed by the pro, and then the pro would work with Hayes to develop specific exercises.

“It’s my job to ask the pro, ‘Where is their weakness?’ And, together, look at videotape and say, ‘Yeah, this needs to be changed, that needs to be changed, if this person wants to get better,'” he said. “So that’s the missing link right now. I am working with a couple of pros, but people want to do their own thing.

“What we need is a place that’s one-stop shopping, where they have me, they have a golf pro, they have a place to work out and not only workout, but hit golf balls and do some swing analysis too.”

Such a place does exist – sort of, anyway.

Hayes was recently contacted by a pro from the Harmon Golf and Fitness Club, a year-round golf center located in Rockland, Mass.

“He’s particularly interested in the juniors,” said Hayes. “At my age, because of what I learned in golf as a young kid and because my body developed in a certain way, I have certain swing faults that probably can’t be corrected. But if we have the juniors and get their bodies working and the muscles working and the joints working properly then they can play longer, better and without injury.”

Hayes runs the Chiropractic Orthopedic Center on Stevens Avenue in Portland. His clinics will take place at noon on both Saturday and Sunday.

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