Positive attraction

Magnets helping Huston cope with aches and pains

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Posted: Thursday July 16, 1998 03:26 PM

Huston shot 5-under-par 65 at Royal Birkdale to grab a share of the British Open lead (AP)

SOUTHPORT, England (Reuters) -- When the dull ache spreads down both sides, when your back hurts and you can't shake off the pain, it's time for desperate measures if you expect to measure up in professional golf.

John Huston was so fed up with the tendinitis in his left wrist and the bursitis in his right shoulder that he decided to adopt an unusual remedy -- magnet therapy.

Now the 37-year-old American sleeps on a magnet-filled mattress cover, which he takes to tournaments in a bag, and has magnetic insoles in his shoes. The pain has gone and he is winning titles again.

And Thursday he shot 5-under-par 65 at Royal Birkdale to grab a share of the British Open lead with Tiger Woods.

Playing in pain for most of 1997, Huston dropped to 141st on the PGA Tour money list. There was not a category of his game in which he was in the top 60 on the tour.

But a meeting with a stranger who caught up with him in a parking lot in Palm Springs, California, led to Huston deciding at the start of the year that he was ready to give the magnets a try.

"He showed me a couple of tests and they were impressive, so I said it couldn't hurt," Huston said Thursday.

After a few days they began to have an effect and by mid-February he was feeling well enough to win the Hawaiian Open with a 28-under-par total of 260 at the Waialae Country Club in Honolulu, a record under-par aggregate for a U.S. Tour event.

Huston has had a run of solid performances since then, including joint second place in the Doral Ryder Open, and he stands ninth on the U.S. money list for the year.

He said the theory of the magnets is that they increase the blood flow so that the body heals faster, though there is no real proof that that happens.

"There's a couple of things they show you test-wise, where they rub it on your back and you have increased flexibility within a minute. Other than that there's really no genuine proof," he said.

"I don't think there is any proof that it does actually work other than people that use them think that they feel better."

Huston said his ailments had given him a constant dull ache in one side or the other of his body and left him feeling weak as well.

"Pretty much every day I would get up and I wouldn't feel very strong, I'd kind of ache. I didn't look forward to going to the golf course and it showed."

He said working out had also helped. "I don't feel stiff when I wake up in the morning. I don't have to spend 30 minutes stretching if I don't want to. I feel pretty loose," he said.

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