Jordan Garay is an athlete. He’s a snowboarder, tennis player, and golfer. Jordan believes it’s important to engage in more than one sport for the crosstraining benefits. He enjoys playing golf and tennis, and these are great ways for him to improve his skills as athlete as well as specifically a snowboarder.
Golf has a reputation as a leisurely sport due to its slow pace and generally minimal athletic requirements. However, Jordan Garay believes that one can attain a lot of very good qualities from playing golf that apply to other sports, especially snowboarding.
For one thing, snowboarding requires a great deal of focus and so does golf. When you’re teeing up and eyeing that flag in the distance, you know that the right swing can put the ball right where you want it to be, but the wrong swing can send a ball way off course, You want that right swing, so you focus on it. In snowboarding, one has to focus on the end of the course from the moment you start at the top. Letting your mind lapse for even one second can be disastrous. In order to be good at golf, one has to be able to keep one’s mind on the task at hand without being stuck on the last hole or already thinking ahead to the next. Likewise, in snowboarding, you can’t get hung up on a bad run or too anxious about an upcoming one.
Precision is another important quality of a good golfer. One has to swing just right and hit the ball in just the right way in order to get desired results. Similarly, in snowboarding, one bad turn, leaning too far left or too far right as you maneuver a course can add seconds to your ride time. When you’re competing in a major competition, seconds can mean the difference between first place and not placing at all.
