Phil's fit and happy

Sean Cochran lived with his family for the first 10 years of his life behind Mounds View High School. "My dad worked for 3M, just like everybody else," he said.

Dad's new job took the family to Chicago. Sean chose sunshine for college and attended the University of San Diego. He graduated in 1995 and worked as a personal trainer at a fitness club.

The Milwaukee Brewers hired him in 1998 as a strength coach for the minor leagues. A couple of years later, he went to work for the San Diego Padres.

Cochran's four years in baseball coincided with a phenomenon taking place in golf. Tiger Woods was a lean 21-year-old when he won the Masters by 12 strokes in 1997.

Over the next five years, the golf world was awestruck by his domination of the competition, as well as the broadening of his shoulders and the granite in his biceps and forearms.

"There's no doubt that Tiger caused the rest of the players to take a new look at conditioning," Cochran said. "I relate what has happened in golf conditioning over the past decade with what happened in baseball in the '80s.

"Before then, weightlifting was almost taboo. The ballclubs discovered that, with the right program, it was very helpful. Now, you won't find a player that doesn't lift weights to some degree."

Readers are allowed to insert their steroids one-liner right here, but the facts are that -- with or without those illegal vitamins -- the time spent lifting and conditioning for ballplayers is tenfold than was the case in the '60s and '70s.

That boom now has been replicated with golf in the Tiger era, although with different conditioning techniques.

Phil Mickelson and his family moved back home to San Diego early in this decade. Late in 2002, an orthopedic specialist put Mickelson in touch with Cochran.

"We started working on a few things -- total body strength, core strength, lower-body strength," Cochran said. "There was also a flexibility issue. Phil was very flexible with his upper body, but he lacked flexibility in his lower body.

"Obviously, Phil had been a great player and he would've continued to be. What a serious strength-and-conditioning program can offer, along with performance improvement, are injury prevention and increased longevity.

"Phil was 32 when I met him. Golfers have a longer playing career than other athletes, but you want to play at the highest level for as long as you can. And Phil realized that conditioning was a key in staying at that level."

The results were not immediate. Mickelson failed to win in 2003 for only the second season since turning pro in 1993. And he finished 38th on the PGA Tour's earnings list, his lowest-ever finish.

This proved that increased strength and conditioning is a process, unless you happen to be David Ortiz and kept pouring in supplements without reading the labels and luckily happened on a power producer.

Mickelson never would be cut like Tiger, but with Cochran's program, the lower body started getting into his swing as never before. He went from ultra-long to nuclear off the tee.

Since 2004, he also has gone from Chokin' Phil, the tremendous talent who might never win a major, to a constant runner-up to Woods as the best player in the world.

Starting in 2004, Mickelson has won three majors among a total of 15 PGA Tour victories. And he has been healthy since hooking up with Cochran, other than a wrist injury during the 2007 season.

"There's not much that can be done to prevent a wrist injury," Cochran said. "Beyond that, Phil has been injury-free. He has a workout room in his home in San Diego, and I go over there three or four times a week. And then I'm on the road with him for tournaments."

Where's the emphasis in training a golfer?

"Lower-back injuries probably have derailed more golf careers than anything," Cochran said. "The phrase today is 'core training' -- the lower back, the abdominal muscles, the hips and sides of legs.

"That's where you want to be as strong and flexible as possible, with all the torque and rotary movement in a golf swing."

Mickelson decided to lose 20 pounds a couple of years ago. Cochran's program helped with that.

On Wednesday, Phil played a practice round at Hazeltine for the first time this week. He looked thick in the right places -- certainly, more fit than in 2002.

"Phil and other top players look at Vijay [Singh], a player known for his workouts and still a contender at 46," Cochran said. "Vijay can still play with guys half his age because of his strength and conditioning."

Patrick Reusse can be heard 5:30-9 a.m. weekdays on AM-1500 KSTP. • preusse@startribune.com