"Golfing Doc" helps pros and weekend warriors improve their games

Shawn Farmer was 22.

She had just finished an outstanding college golf career at Eastern Washington, and her future in the game should have been bright.

But she couldn't do it anymore. Her back hurt too much.

Farmer was giving up the game.

She credits Harry Sese with changing that.

Combining his two specialties, chiropractic and massage therapy, plus his love of golf, he takes a whole-body approach to helping everyone from PGA Tour pros to weekend hackers.

"The body needs to move a certain way," Sese said. "We see a lot of people who are ready to give up the game. With proper assessment and treatment, you give them hope again."

At his Bellevue office, he puts new patients through a battery of strength, balance and flexibility tests, then comes up with a treatment plan that can combine chiropractic adjustments, massage, stretching and exercises.

"Typically, I will have a golfer come in with some sort of injury — a physical issue that is preventing them from improving," Sese said. "We work on that to put the fire out. Then we try maxing how the body moves through better biomechanics."

It worked for Farmer.

"If someone looked at my swing, they might not have noticed anything, but I was using the wrong muscles and my mechanics were the reverse of what they should have been," she said. "It was inevitable that my body was going to break down."

Farmer underwent wrist and shoulder surgery, then came the bad lower-back pain. Farmer said Sese helped identify the reasons she was hurting, and they worked together to come up with a swing that not only quit taxing her physically, but helped her get more distance.

Farmer got her game back — and went to work for Sese.

He's "The Golfing Doc," and she's "The Fitness Caddie" — a logical fit with her exercise degree.

Collaborating with Sese, she designs exercise programs to help prevent injuries, alleviate their impact and generally improve clients' golf games.

Patients undergo an initial evaluation (which costs $300, and includes a long written report), then will follow up with one or both partners, depending on their situation. Farmer said most of her clients see her at least once a week.

"Not everything can be solved just by technique," said Farmer, who also is the girls golf coach at The Overlake School in Redmond. "Sometimes instructors will try to have students do things they are physically incapable of doing."

Sese, 34, was a Canadian champion in Taekwondo and played golf throughout college, earning chiropractic and massage-therapy degrees. He's a former massage therapist for the B.C. Lions of the Canadian Football League.

Sese and Farmer are both certified by the Titleist Performance Institute, which specializes in golf-specific fitness and golf-swing biomechanics. Its mission is to improve golf performance by looking at "a total picture of your body, swing and (golf) equipment."

Sese travels to several professional tour events each year as a practitioner for Pro-Golf Health, whose clients include major champion winners Padraig Harrington, Graeme McDowell, Louis Oosthuizen and this year's Masters champion, Charl Schwartzel.

Pro-Golf Health works with clients all year, providing services that includes chiropractic care, massage, fitness plans and nutritional advice.

Amateurs also benefit from the whole-body approach. Leslie Folsom, who has won the Seattle Women's Golf Association city championship the past three years, went to Sese in 2009 suffering stiffness in her neck and shoulders.

"I wanted to use his chiropractic skills to get my body in alignment and create that explosive power," she said. "He really loosened my neck and back and got my body in alignment. They built a fitness program for me, the things I needed to strengthen. I wanted to add 20 yards, and we are past that. I am now landing the ball where my personal bests had been in the past."

Scott Hanson: 206-464-2943