A Retired NBA Player Gets Serious About Golf: What Solomon Hill's TPI Assessment Can Teach Every Golfer

Solomon Hill spent nine years in the NBA. He's 6'7", 245 pounds, and by any measure an elite athlete. He's also a 14 handicap who picked up a club for the first time around 2020 and has only been playing seriously since 2022.

In other words, on the golf course he has a lot more in common with the average player than one might think.

When Solomon came in for a full TPI assessment with Dave Phillips, the headline wasn't his raw power, though there was plenty of that. It was that the things holding back a former pro athlete are, more or less, three of the same things that hold back the average weekend player. Here's what came out of his day with us, and what every golfer can take from it.

A golf bag is a roster. Build it like one.

The first thing we always remind people: a club doesn't move until someone picks it up, and the moment they do, the body is involved. But that doesn't let the equipment off the hook.

Solomon had recently been regripped, and on his own he'd asked the shop to write down the actual lofts of his irons. He assumed they were all standard. They weren't. "There were some disparities," he said, and just knowing the real numbers changed how he thought about his set.

Lucas Bro, Supervisor of Club Fitting at TPI, framed it in a way that resonated with the former NBA player: a golf bag is "like you're building a roster," with different positions, different strengths and weaknesses, and no wasted redundancies. Many amateurs have never thought about it that way. They have gaps they can't see, overlaps that waste a slot, and specs that don't match their body or their swing.

In addition to the lofts, length was the biggest factor for Solomon. As a tall player he'd been put into very long clubs, which can feel clunky. When the club is too long and gets behind him, it lags, and then he has to release it early to catch up. When we handed him a club built for a six-foot-nine tour player at near-standard length, the ball came off more penetrating and started more on line. Going a touch shorter actually helped him feel on top of the ball. Better compression, better strike, better flight.

The lesson is the principle Dave keeps coming back to: a player's clubs should be working toward where they want to go, not stopping them from getting there. Most golfers have never had that checked.

A turn is only as good as the hips.

Solomon's movement screen was as good as many tour players we see. Strength was off the charts and power was excellent. He moves exceptionally well, especially for a bigger athlete.

But two things showed up. His ankle dorsiflexion was a little tight, and the bigger one: his internal hip rotation was limited on both sides.

That makes sense. Though basketball is a multi-planar sport, it doesn't have the same demands on internal hip mobility as golf. When a rotary athlete has tight hips, a few predictable things happen. Golfers often can't load and use the ground as well. They are also prone to early extension, where the hips push toward the ball and the body stands up through impact. And when the lower body runs out of room like that, the hands have to bail it out, which is exactly the "flippy" release at the bottom that can produce thin contact and that hard pull-hook Solomon came in complaining about.

The encouraging part: none of this takes hours of grinding. Solomon left with a program on his phone built around simple hip work — windshield wipers and clamshells that fit into a pre-round warm-up or a few minutes on the floor at home. Often, restoring a little rotation in the hips is what finally lets a swing change stick.

Stop guessing. Get a plan.

The most honest moment of the day was simple. Talking about his practice, Solomon admitted: "I don't have a plan." He'd go to the range, try a few things, go home, and have no idea what to actually work on.

That's the trap most golfers are in. Effort without direction.

What an assessment does is turn effort into a roadmap. The physical screen reveals what a golfer's body can and can't do, and what to work on in the gym. The session with the coach translates that into the swing, and into what to practice on the range. Put together, a player stops chasing tips and starts following a path built specifically for them.

As Dave put it, getting better starts with a clear path: understand the parameters, understand how the body moves, and then either find an instructor who can build a swing around that movement, or train the body so it can support the swing the golfer wants.

Solomon said it best on his way out. Now that he has the information, the app, and the plan, "the responsibility is on me." No more excuses. That's the whole point.

The assessment doesn't do the work for a golfer, but it makes sure the work they do actually counts.

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If you're a golfer interested in a physical assessment, you can connect with a TPI Certified expert via our Find an Expert page.