Holly Sonders of the Golf Channel’s “Morning Drive” will be featured on the cover of Golf Digest’s May fitness issue. The 35-page magazine will focus on how people can get in the best physical shape possible for golf.
Sonders played golf at Michigan State before she began her broadcast career. She has worked for the Big Ten Network and KATV in Little Rock, Ark.
Sonders is also featured on the Golf Channel’s “School of Golf” segments. Sonders told Golf Digest she would “tee it up from like 6,400 to 6,500 yards. I’d be about a 3- or a 4-handicap.”
Sonders said fitness is more important to her than keeping her golf skills up because she has no meniscus and has scoliosis. She works out four times a week and does 500 abdominal exercises three times a week.
Some say Sonders’ role in the public eye of the golf world objectifies her and plays up her femininity.
“I dress the way I dress because style is very important to me,” Sonders said. “I love being a girl. You can be a pit-bull competitor. You can want to kick people’s asses in every sport, but you can still be feminine and still be sexy.”
Sonders is the 44th woman to be placed on the magazine’s cover, though John Liebhart of the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication wrote that the magazine has a predominately male focus.
“There is no … opposition to women, friends and children,” he said. “In Golf Digest, they simply barely exist at all.”
The fitness issue will also feature Rickie Fowler, Mark Wahlberg and Jason Dufner.
