Speakers: Nino Nikolovski, Clinic Workflow Manager, Pathway Surgery (host), and Kevin Thistle, Chief Executive Officer, PGA of Canada. Recorded at Tam O'Shanter Golf Club, Toronto. Lightly edited for readability.
Nino: Welcome back to another episode of the Pathway Surgery podcast. Today is an exciting one. I'm joined at the beautiful Tam O'Shanter Golf Club by Mr. Kevin Thistle, and we're here to talk about a new collaboration and national partnership between the PGA of Canada and Pathway Surgery. Kevin, first off, how's it going? And can you tell the viewers a little bit about yourself?
Kevin Thistle: I'm the CEO of the PGA of Canada. I've been a golf pro for over 40 years. I love golf. I've built golf courses, I've run golf courses, and I'm so proud to be the CEO right now because I feel I'm working for my brothers and sisters of the PGA of Canada. It's kind of my dream job. Where I am is where I'd want to be.
Nino: Fantastic to hear. You've been CEO of the PGA of Canada for almost a decade now.
Kevin Thistle: Eight and a half years.
Nino: Eight and a half years, with a very successful national program, over 4,300 professionals. With all of that in context, what made Pathway Surgery the right fit for you and the right partnership for the PGA?
Kevin Thistle: Pathway is a great partner because golf is such a physical sport. It's an aging demographic, and Pathway, of course, are orthopedic surgeons, but they're so great with prevention. That's the thing: we're going to have so much education, not just for our members. It's not just about the 4,300 members. Think of the people they coach, the people they teach, the members at their club who are aging and in pain. If we can help prevent some of these operations, fantastic. But if it gets to the point where someone needs the operation, Pathway can deliver that too.
Nino: That's an important point, that it's an aging demographic. Part of the reasoning behind this is that the science of longevity and injury prevention has gotten to the point where people can play for longer and be healthier. That's really what we're trying to emphasize and promote in this collaboration. PGA professionals are going to have a lot of benefits through the partnership, but medical education and health literacy is going to be a central focus, through things like webinars and the newsletters. Why do you feel education specifically is such an important aspect for the PGA?
Kevin Thistle: Fifty years ago, every pro played and taught, and that's all they did. In the last five, ten, fifteen years the focus has changed. Now a lot of them are general managers, head golf professionals, directors of golf, even manufacturers' reps. We come into contact with so many different people now. And the time is now: if we can do the education, if we can teach our students that this is a prevention game, we're not just going hard, hitting the ball as hard as you can, and having an operation in ten years. No, you can play way better. In any sport, if you can prevent the injury from coming on in the first place. That's the greatest thing about this partnership. We're getting the experts to educate us, because we are not the experts in health.
Nino: Even though we have world-class surgeons on the team across many orthopedic specialties, we all strongly believe at Pathway that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So we're excited to get these newsletters out and get the critical information to your members. Something that's going to be unique about this partnership is that we're tailoring it to the part of the season PGA professionals are in. From peak season to post-season to recovery, the content will follow that rhythm. You touched on having specialists to listen to. What do you think PGA of Canada members will gain from hearing directly from specialists at the top of their fields?
Kevin Thistle: We all know our family doctor. I can ask him about hip surgery or knee surgery and he'll give me an answer, but he's not the expert there. I have a great family doctor, but he's not the specialist. Here we have the experts giving us the education that we can pass on to our members, and then they can pass it on to the amateur golfers. We're all being rewarded by being in partnership with the best in the business, really.
Nino: You also went through some personal pain and the surgical process yourself. Looking back, what do you feel you would have wanted to know as a younger golfer coming up and loving the game, pieces of information that would have helped you across the span of your career?
Kevin Thistle: When I was younger I played a lot of golf. We just tried to hit it hard. We walked every day, walked up mountains and down, and there was never a thought of taking care of our bodies. There was never a thought of prevention, and even then I wouldn't have known what to do. Then all of a sudden it's, "Oh, you need a hip replacement." Time caught up with me. I need a second hip replacement. Think about the younger people now, or even people in middle age: you can help prevent it. It might not stop it, but maybe it puts it down the road 20 years. That would have been the greatest thing for me. If I could have put my surgery off a little further because of prevention, that's what I'm looking forward to for others.
Nino: Looking back at that time, what about things like strength, mobility, sleep, nutrition, supplements? Were any of these ever emphasized in your career, or around the PGA of Canada, as you were coming up?
Kevin Thistle: They weren't when I was growing up. Think about the Tiger Woods era, which isn't that long ago. When I was watching Ben Crenshaw or Fuzzy Zoeller, and even when I watched Tiger Woods and Mike Weir, there wasn't much talk of physicality. Players would go out, have a couple of drinks, maybe smoke, and go play golf the next day. Now you watch the tour and every single player has a strength coach, a conditioning coach, nutrition. It's fantastic how far we've come in a short time.
Nino: That's what we're so excited to do with our team of surgeons: synthesize the evidence-based data and the clinical experience these surgeons bring into easily digestible newsletters and seminars that people can engage with, and take away something actionable. Micro changes in their day that add up and lead to long careers. Do you feel the role of a PGA professional has changed over time in ways that place different demands on their physical health?
Kevin Thistle: Absolutely. Before, the golf pro was expected to play with the members and teach a little. That was the old-time pro. Now, since the pandemic especially, the pros are working so hard. There used to be a Wednesday evening or a Sunday evening or a Tuesday morning that wasn't so busy. Now every golf course is so busy. You're in the pro shop, you're on the teaching range, you're playing with members, you're ordering clubs, you're in the office doing accounting. It's non-stop. The stress on their bodies is far greater than it was even ten or fifteen years ago.
Nino: Being around these people every day, do you find the demands differ between teaching professionals and playing professionals?
Kevin Thistle: Definitely. Even the teaching professionals, our great teaching professionals, a lot of them play, so they've got hybrid demands. The playing professional, when you get to the tour, usually has a lot of people around to help and to make you take some downtime. But we have so many pros who want to teach and play. They're trying to fit both in, and they don't take any downtime. So there is definitely a difference.
Nino: That's important to mention. A high training demand is necessary to improve and keep making the adjustments you need as a golfer. But what's been overlooked, not just in golf but in many sports, is recovery. Recovery isn't only a passive process. It can be active: making conscious decisions to do things that help your body and your joints recover, and that can be individualized to the person. We're excited to get a lot of that information out there. For you personally, as CEO of the PGA of Canada, what would success look like in this partnership with Pathway?
Kevin Thistle: Success is that our members get so much out of this partnership, and we're going to be able to measure it. It's twofold: something for themselves, and something for their students. It could be as simple as the prevention, the education, the nutrition. But also, if I know someone needs a hip, a knee, a shoulder, whatever, I have a place to send them. That's the great thing about the PGA of Canada. We're a very tight network, and when someone asks a question it's nice to be able to say, "Here's a great partner of ours. Contact them."
Nino: And it's even better that there are specialists across every joint, because golf is demanding on the full kinetic chain: power generation through the hips, down through the knees to the ankles, and the torsion through the upper body. We're excited to have a multidisciplinary team from different specialties that can work together, because it isn't just about treating joints in isolation. It's the whole-body view of how the shoulder interacts with the hip in a given part of the movement. If you had one word to describe this partnership with Pathway, what would it be, and why?
Kevin Thistle: One word? Can I say a little phrase?
Nino: We'll make an exception.
Kevin Thistle: When we first talked about this, I thought it was almost the right partnership at the right time. You mentioned the holistic approach. I've got a bad knee, I go to the doctor, and my surgeon says, "It's not your knee, it's your hip. Your hip has been affecting your knee." I'm like, whoa. We know so much more about the body now, and that's why the timing of this partnership is so important.
Nino: What would you tell PGA professionals who might be hesitant to join these seminars or engage with the newsletters? What would you say to convince them of the contribution they can make to themselves by taking on their own health literacy?
Kevin Thistle: Health literacy and education is king. I'm a university graduate, but I've never stopped learning, and especially in this area. If you can take some tidbits for yourself, you'll find something. But then, if you have a student on the range who asks you a question and you can say, "I've got some information on that, I can send it to you," that's paramount. It makes you look like an expert, and that's what you're trying to do: be the best coach you can be. We need to educate ourselves on so many things.
Nino: That's a fantastic place to leave it: the importance of education, and how excited we are to continue this partnership and develop it into something very special for golf in Canada. Kevin Thistle, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for sharing your insights, and we're excited for everything ahead.
Kevin Thistle: Thank you very much.
