A TPI screen is a golf-specific movement assessment developed by the Titleist Performance Institute. It shows us how your body moves, where you move efficiently and where you don’t. That tells us why you may have been injured, or what part of your body is more likely to suffer a future injury and what is physically limiting your swing.
There are countless ways to swing a club, most of golfers have tried a lot of them. But what every golfer is after is repeatability, the ability to make the same swing over and over again. Repeatability depends on your body. If a joint can’t move where the swing needs it to, or can’t stay stable when it should, your body finds a workaround. Those workarounds can show up as swing faults, inconsistency, and eventually pain.
The TPI screen finds those limitations so we’re working on the cause instead of chasing symptoms. We use the screen because it encompasses everything a golfer needs to efficiently and correctly swing a golf club. This is step one for every golfer we work with.
Each of these results tends to coincide with specific swing characteristics. For example, limited hip rotation often shows up as sway or slide. Poor pelvic control is commonly linked to early extension and loss of posture.
The golf swing is a series of movements in a sequential pattern, with the end goal being to get the golf ball to hit as close to the center of the club face as possible. In order to do that well, we need our body to perform in all three planes of motion. Front to back. Side to side. And most importantly, rotation. That’s why a golf injury or swing fault can rarely be understood by looking at one body part. A full-body movement needs a full-body assessment.
The TPI assessment looks at each body segment and asks two basic questions: does it move enough and can it stay controlled when it needs to? When one segment falls short, the joints above and below it has to pick up the slack. That’s a common cause of low back pain, elbow pain and shoulder pain in golfers. The answer tells us whether your body can currently make a safe, effective swing and if not, it identifies exactly where it can’t.
The screen sets the blueprint for determining what your body can do well and where it needs work. In areas where a player is lacking, we create a plan to safely improve the player’s mobility, stability, and motor control so that they can meet the on-course demands.
If you’re in pain, treatment starts here. With hands-on manual therapy, dry needling, and targeted exercises. Once we’ve met your movement goals, we can move to the next step. This consists of testing and training for strength, speed, power and performance.
Golf has some of the most unique movement requirements across any sport. This is one of the only sports where the ball isn’t moving, and likewise the body isn’t moving when the swing starts. Unlike baseball, you don’t have the lead leg step to start the swing. You create all of the force from a stationary position.
That force has to be loaded and released in sequence, from the ground up through the hips, torso, arms, and club. Every link in that chain has to do its job. If one link is weak or restricted, the whole sequence suffers, and the stress lands somewhere it shouldn’t. That’s why assessing each piece matters for both your performance and the longevity of your game.
If you would like to learn more about the TPI Assessment you can visit the Titleist website.
