Ryan Gerard's TPI Experience: The Data Behind His Rise into the Top 30

Ryan Gerard started the 2025 season ranked 199th in the world. He's currently 28th.

That kind of jump doesn't happen by accident.  It happens when a player figures out what the gaps are, and goes to work.

When Ryan came to our facility last year, he was already an ascendant golfer, having climbed to around 50th in the world. He had wins on the Canadian Tour, the Korn Ferry Tour, and the PGA Tour. He came in with a short list of goals: add distance, clean up his putting inside ten feet, and stay healthy. Dave Phillips and Dr. Greg Rose ran him through a full evaluation. What they found was a player who was close, with a few specific things holding him back.

The power is there. The transfer isn't.

Ryan's movement screen came back nearly clean. Both his movement quality and some of his movement capacities were excellent. He generated vertical ground force at 218% of body weight, well above the PGA Tour average of 198%. His swing has some unique qualities, but it absolutely works.

However, the power testing told a more specific story. His lower body and upper body numbers were right at Tour average, but his core was not. A sit-up-and-throw of roughly 15-16 feet against a Tour average around 21 feet, and a 28% rotational strength deficit between sides, pointed to a clear gap in the transfer link between lower and upper body.

As an oversimplification of the golf swing, the lower body generates power, the core transfers it, the arms deliver it. When that middle link is weak, the chain breaks, often showing up as the pelvis "unplugging" during the downswing. For Ryan, that means leaving distance on the table and, potentially, accumulating stress in exactly the wrong place by requiring his lower back to do more of the work.

In addition to the Level 1 screen, this is the value of the power screen that we teach in our advanced Power and Fitness courses.  In this case the screen didn't just represent where power is being created, but that it might be lost before it ever reaches the club.

The putting fix took about ten minutes.

Ryan flagged the 5-10 foot range as a statistical weakness. Dave Phillips took one look at his setup and found the culprit: a strong grip, putter held low in the fingers, with wrists free to hinge. On longer putts, there's enough time in the stroke for the face to recover. On shorter ones, there isn't.

Dave's fix was straightforward: move the grip higher, stabilize the wrists, and let the putter swing rather than hinge. Within a few strokes, Ryan was making putts he'd been leaking.

Small inefficiencies compound. Finding them early is the job.

The TPI team approach.

Ryan had been doing what many young touring pros do on the road: bands, body weight work, hotel room floors. He's resourceful. But resourceful only gets you so far when you're trying to compete with the top 50 players in the world.

Dave was direct about it: "If you want to be playing with the top 50 in the world, you've got to act like the top 50. You need a trainer. Just show up to someone you trust."

Ryan has the benefit of working with one of the best coaches in the world, PGA Teacher of the Year Jason Baile. Jason is a coach who preaches the TPI philosophy, including the importance of building a team. 

Ryan already seemed to know. "Everything that I'm doing outside of golf," he said, "needs to be to get better."

That's the approach shared by the majority of the peers he is competing against. The body might be the most important piece of equipment a player owns. Leaving it unmanaged is the same as showing up to a tournament without a swing coach. The swing doesn't exist in isolation from the body that produces it.

Ryan Gerard has the game. He has the data to back it up. What comes next is structure, a trusted fitness professional who can take the guesswork out of the gym, so that all he has to think about is playing golf.

As Dr. Rose said, "He could be that player that all of a sudden is a top ten player in the world."