Why Hockey Players Like Ottawa Senators Star Drake Batherson Are Great Golfers

Drake Batherson is the best golfer on the Ottawa Senators. But, according to the NHL’s top stars, he may in fact be the best in the league.

Nathan MacKinnon, who was the NHL’s MVP last season, told Bleacher Report’s Jonny Lazarus in a recent interview that Batherson shot under par when they played together in the summertime. In another interview, MacKinnon said Batherson was, indeed, the best golfer in the NHL.

Batherson, who was born in Indiana but grew up in Germany and moved to Canada when he was eight (with a professional hockey-playing father) is now – yes, even a half-dozen years into his NHL career – a scratch golfer. This summer, he says, he got to a plus-one handicap.

Not bad for someone who is in his sixth NHL season.

“I was probably playing my best golf in like five years,” Batherson says with a smile. “It was a good summer.”

Which brings us to the question a lot of people probably wonder: Why do hockey players make such good golfers? Why not turn to the NHL’s best golfer to find out why.

The 2024-25 NHL campaign is now well underway, and Batherson got off to a terrific start, racking up 12 points in the first 11 games. A key component to that streak is an incredible level of fitness, which helps not just on the ice, but on golf course, as well. Batherson talked to PGA.com while dripping sweat on a stationary bike, a key part of his recovery and “cool-down” routine after a Senators practice. Being in good shape has also allowed him to play every game for the Senators (82) the last two seasons in a row.

The NHL season also allows for plenty of the game’s best to fully enjoy their summers, so it makes complete sense that hockey stars would gravitate towards the low-impact nature of golf. But while they have the physical attributes to smash a golf ball, Batherson says it’s a little simpler than that.

“Maybe it’s the hand-eye part of it – it’s similar right? You’ve got the stick and the puck and the club and ball,” he explains. “It’s something fun to do in the summer that isn’t too taxing on the body too. Depends on how hard you’re swinging I guess, but it’s also fun to get out of the house and do something with your buddies.”

The resemblance between Batherson’s slap shot and golf swing is what Tommy Asuma, the co-founder of SMART Golf & Fitness in Chicago, is one of several major factors in NHLers being such good players.

“From a biomechanical standpoint, a lot of the things done in hockey are very similar to the motions that you want in golf,” Asuma says. “Taking a slap shot, or even a wrist shot, creates the same type of velocity for golf and it’s all about sequencing. We want to keep the hands ahead, and we want everything to get generated from the ground up.”

It helps to have a little passion for the game, too.

Batherson got the golf bug early. His dad, Norm Batherson, loves golf (in fact, the father is probably better than the son. Norm has won their club championship in Nova Scotia two of the last four years. Drake won it in 2014 when he was just 16 but he has been otherwise preoccupied, you know, making it to the NHL) and got his son swinging sticks when he was just about two years old.

Batherson, the younger, said he worked at a club near their Nova Scotia home for nearly a decade as a youngster as well – anything from cleaning the clubhouse to picking range balls and cleaning carts.

He got good fast. The club championship victory came in a tidy summertime stretch as a teen where Batherson was competing against guys in Canada like Myles Creighton, who is now on the Korn Ferry Tour.

“I saw him get a scholarship and I was thinking at the time maybe I would go the golf route because I was a small guy and at the time I was better at golf than I was hockey. I grew a bit and stuck with hockey – and it ended up working out,” Batherson says, laughing.

The game is still awfully fun, if a little less competitive. Batherson travels to Ireland every summer for a golf trip, at one point playing 14 rounds in 10 days, and will often tee it up with MacKinnon and fellow Nova Scotian Sidney Crosby.

Brooke Henderson, who won the 2016 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and just signed on as an ambassador for the Senators this off-season – she grew up a fan of the team and it was a unique deal for a female athlete and a men’s professional sports team – can also count Batherson as a fan.

“We’ve chatted before and hopefully we can link up for a round. I’m sure she’ll take all my money,” Batherson says. “I’ve watched her for a long time now. Huge fan. Would love to make it happen.”

The Senators, a young team with eyes on the playoffs for the first time in almost a decade, have a handful of good players. The team’s captain, Brady Tkachuk, was even seen celebrating with a drink out of the Wanamaker Trophy after Brooks Koepka – a noted Florida Panthers fan, the team Tkachuk’s brother plays for – won the PGA in 2023. Claude Giroux, for example, has played on a sponsor exemption on the PGA TOUR Americas event in Ottawa the last two summers.

“A lot of guys that think they’re pretty good,” Batherson says with a smile.

The 26-year-old gets about 60-70 rounds per year in, a few of those coming in the season if they have an off-day on road trips to sunny spots. The team, he says, played Pebble Beach last year. And in Florida have recently pegged it at Grove XXIII (Michael Jordan’s course) along with the Justin Thomas/Jack Nicklaus co-design, Panther National.

“We love to play,” Batherson says.

NHL stars – they’re just like us.

While we all can’t play in the NHL, there’s a lot we can learn from their fitness and strengths to help our own golf games. Asuma goes into three areas to work on this winter:

Hockey players are used to a lot of lateral movements and their hips and glutes, Asuma says, are “gigantic and super strong.” So when hockey players go from a slippery surface to a stable surface – but still swinging an implement – often times there is great stability in the lower half of the body. “The more strength and stability in the lower half, the greater separation you can create up top,” Asuma adds, “and the greater consistency you can create with your golf swing.”

As Batherson said about the hand-eye coordination, Asuma explains that vision training is done for athletes of all sports. One drill they do at SMART Golf & Fitness, and that you can do, too, is simple: balance on one leg and toss a ball back and forth to different hands. “Ultimately,” he says, “through their drill work they get a lot of vision training done to improve hand-eye.”

Even after an hourlong practice, Batherson jumped on the stationary bike almost immediately. Asuma says, for golfers, after walking 18 holes the first thing many want to do is plop down for a beer. That actually hurts your body in the long run given the lactic acid build up. It’s best to stretch it out a bit first – even when you’re just changing from your golf shoes to your casual shoes.