"Going for the Green" by Gary Gilchrist, Susan Hill, and Jeff Troesch

It used to be that if you wanted to work on your golf game, all you had to do was hit balls. Today, serious players realize that golf fitness is as important to one’s game as golf technique.

In “Going for the Green: Prepare Your Body, Mind, and Swing for Winning Golf” (Sterling, $25), Gary Gilchrist, Susan Hill, and Jeff Troesch take golf instruction one step further by adding mental coaching to the overall game improvement plan.

Gilchrist is a swing coach, Hill is a fitness trainer, and Troesch is a mental training expert. Together, they have compiled a comprehensive and integrated guide to training and preparation for competitive golf.

The underlying idea is periodization training, which refers to compartmentalized training of individual aspects of the game, with sufficient rest and restoration between like training sessions.

The book comprises seven chapters, the first three of which get you into the program, and the final four of which walk you through the Technical Phase, Pre-competition Phase, Competition Phase, and Active Rest and Regeneration Phase of competitive golf.

Of all the instructional books I’ve seen in the past few years, this one is the most complete—almost encyclopedic in its coverage of all aspects of the game, including copious color photos.

If there is a weakness, though, it is that the target audience of the book appears to be quite hard-core golfers. Case in point, many of the fitness exercises depicted would be borderline dangerous for some of the older, more decrepit recreational golfers I play with.

However, if you happen to be a high school or college golf coach, or instructor looking for a guide for you and your more serious students to follow, I cannot think of a better all-around book on the market today.