Golf Year-Round in Edina

It’s fall, and the golf season is winding down, with only a few more opportunities to hit the links. (Sad trombone.)  Not so at Totally Driven, where a complete orchestra of options will help you heat up your game during the frozen months—especially if you don’t already hit it long and straight down the fairway. Just ask Mike Kelley, who routinely drove from St. Cloud to Totally Driven’s center in Oakdale, before he recently moved to Edina. That’s a three-hour round trip just to shed some strokes.  “It was worth the drive,” says Kelley, a jewelry designer at JF Kruse Jewelers in St. Cloud. “It was very personalized service. Working here, that is what we provide to our customers, and I know how much they love that, so it was the same thing when I would go down there."Totally Driven, which relocated to Edina in April, offers a comprehensive, one-stop shop. Totally Driven’s foursome includes Lynn Anderson (coach), Andy Thompson (club fitter), Jon Weedman (builder) and Jason Jaynes (juniors coach). Part of the idea came from Anderson, a three-sport star in tennis, basketball and golf at Edina High School in the early 1980s. She played competitive tennis in Europe and returned home to be the tennis pro at Northwest Racquet Club for 13 years. At Northwest, she could get a lesson, workout and get her racket strung, all in one place.But Anderson, also a fitness instructor, sought another challenge: lowering her golf handicap. She made it onto the LPGA Futures Tour, but without a place like the racquet club. “I had to go somewhere to meet the golf pro,” Anderson says. “And I had to get my equipment done over here and had to meet the fitness person over there.”Although Kelley came from St. Cloud, he didn’t have to crisscross the Twin Cities with Totally Driven’s professional club fitting and building, full workout gym memberships and personalized coaching with technology enhancements.Under the tutelage of Anderson a few times a week for a few years, Kelley, who was shooting in the 80s, now shoots near par of 72.“On the fitness side is where I’ve seen the biggest gains,” says Kelley, who has added about 20 pounds of muscle in those few years. “I’ve learned a lot of that from Totally Driven: About golf and how much fitness plays a role in it.”Now Kelley, who plays in about 20 tournaments a year, can hit 400 or 500 balls in a day and not get sore. “I can walk 36 holes and still play tournament golf at a high level,” he adds. “I can hit the ball where I want on a consistent basis.”Anderson’s approach is first to evaluate. “I’m not going to look at you and guess,” she says. “I do a fully physical evaluation. … I will check everything from mobility to stability to balance to strength to power sources and I will collect data.”She says too much about golf is swing tips, doing it how Tiger Woods does it. “Your body is your engine,” says the 2004 Edina Athletic Hall of Fame inductee. “If you can’t make a turn and get into that position in your body, you are never going to get it in a golf swing.”Anderson says the biggest limitation is a player’s mobility, or lack thereof. She uses the rule of thumb that if you are 30-something, then 30 percent of your workout should be stretching. For 50-somethings, half your workout should be stretching. At Totally Driven, more than 3,000 square feet are dedicated to fitness.“We lose flexibility so quickly as we age,” says Anderson, 48. “That is a biggie right there. You can build from there. You can build stability and strength and some power around that.”One thing you don’t have to be flexible about any longer is the number of spots you must visit to lower the number on your scorecard.