I’m baffled when someone tells me that men don’t like massages. I do, a lot, and judging by the many guys I’ve seen in spas at golf resorts here and abroad, I am not alone. But there’s still this misconception that spas are just for women.
There’s nothing like a good massage while on a golf trip, basking in healing and good feeling following a tough round. Like, for example, after tackling the TPC Scottsdale. During the 51 weeks a year that it’s not hosting the Waste Management Phoenix Open (still the funniest name I know for a golf event), the course is open to the public. And I can’t think of any bodies more in need of TLC than those just finishing a TPC.
Fortuitously, the course snuggles up against the Fairmont Scottsdale resort, one of the area’s finest and site of the recently renovated Well & Being Spa, which offers a wide range of therapies and treatments. There also are some golf-specific treatments, including one endorsed by David Leadbetter and Charles Howell III.
While in Scottsdale recently, I walked off the course and into a Fairmont Scottsdale Well & Being treatment room for a hot stone massage, a procedure offered at many spas but one I’d always eschewed. Boy, was I wrong! As part of a really good deep-tissue kneading, chunks of heated basalt were strategically placed on my back and also used by the masseur to augment his working of my much-maligned muscles. The spa brochure says Native Americans used hot stones in their healing rituals, giving me even more appreciation for the tribal cultures that exert a big influence on the lifestyle in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert.
So it seems I’ve just found something else I prefer on the rocks.
