Jesper Parnevik, Stem Cells And The Swede Who Might Make Major History

Jesper Parnevik, 60, currently competing on the PGA Tour Champions circuit, spent 38 weeks ranked among the world’s top 10 golfers around the turn of the century. During his heyday, he became as well known for his flamboyant fashion—an upturned baseball cap that unintentionally succeeded in turning the underside of the brim into fresh new real estate for sponsor branding—as for his play.

The late, great sportswriter Dan Jenkins once described the Swedish fashionista who amassed 5 PGA Tour and 4 European tour victories, as “the last guy to climb out of the clown car” but the down-to-clown ballstriker’s unorthodox style statements belied a game that was all business underneath. His commitment to flair, fitness and fearless shot-making made him one of the most memorable—and effective—players of his generation.

Parnevik’s trailblazing tendency has not faded with age. While on a flight to Miami, he struck up a conversation with a group of friends who were enroute to Albany, Bahamas to participate in a clinical trial led by Cellcolabs—a Solna based biotech focused on stem cell therapies. The mention of a clinic run by a company from his home country piqued the golfer’s interest.

“I was impressed that first of all, it was a Swedish clinic and I was impressed with what they showed me and the talks I had with their doctors and scientists. That was the reason I went with Cellcolabs,” Parnevik, a self-described ‘research nerd,’ who as part of his due diligence met with doctors at a lab in the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm where the research behind the treatment was developed.

The clinical trial Parnevik participated in is aimed at preventing cardiovascular disease and treating musculoskeletal injuries and involves injecting mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in hopes of reducing inflammation and improving longevity biomarkers. Stem cell injections into joints— which are still considered experimental—start at $16,500, while an intravenous (IV) treatment is $25,000. Parnevik has had the IV treatment twice while his wife has had both the IV and a targeted injection in her hip. These treatments, which utilize stem cells from donors, are not FDA approved. Currently, the only approved stem cell therapies in the United States involve hematopoietic progenitor cells derived from umbilical cord blood. In certain cases, a patient’s own stem cells may also be used in procedures that meet specific regulatory criteria.

While most MSC therapies remain unproven and unapproved in the U.S., particularly for anti-aging or orthopedic use, they have shown promise in regenerative medicine. Mesoblast’s Ryoncil recently became the first of its kind to receive FDA approval to treat a rare pediatric condition.

Athletes seeking non-FDA approved stem cell therapies is hardly novel. Peyton Manning reportedly traveled to Europe in 2011 to undergo such a procedure for a neck injury. That treatment involved harvesting stem cells from his own fat cells and injecting them into his neck in hopes of regenerating damaged tissue. Five years later, Manning led the Denver Broncos to Super Bowl glory—though there’s no way of knowing whether the therapy played any role in his recovery.

Today, the price of treatments like this is currently prohibitive. Even Parnevik had some sticker shock before he committed to the Cellcolabs trial and concurred that affordability is a major barrier. The company believes that as production scales up, costs could come down. Its goal is to reduce the price of stem cells by 90% over the next decade.

“Not everyone can pay the 16 or 20 grand to do an injection. If you have some severe injuries, you are ready to try anything. But yes, it is pricy,” Parnevik noted, adding that he believes stem cells will help a lot of people in the future as the treatments become more affordable.

Swinging for Longevity

Golf is a lifetime sport that rewards both commitment and creativity. The game’s resident health guru Gary Player —who, at 89, can still launch into his signature karate kick with the flair of Ralph Macchio—recently told reporters at the Masters that he hopes to live to 100. While Parnevik may not have a number in mind, extending his own longevity has been a focus for years.

“Throughout my career. I have always been very curious and tried a lot of different ways to improve my health and my golf game,” Parnevik said. “I’ve tried most things in the past. I tried not only to be a vegetarian, I tried to be a fruitarian for a while—it was very convincing that that was the way to go.”

That particular vitamin-c heavy phase also included ingesting volcanic sand, which he’d read could help flush heavy metals from the body.

“But for me, to eat fruit like I did for a few months, I didn’t have the energy to practice or play golf at the level I wanted,” he said, admitting it was more of an experiment—one that allowed him to speak knowledgeably when other players asked what he was doing and why.

Today, he laughs when recalling just how deep into that wellness experimentation he once ventured. “When you go into that world and meet the people who are part of it—now we’re getting really funky—they were talking about how, in the future, there are going to be ‘airtarians,’” Parnevik said. “All you’re going to do is breathe, and the atoms are going to change into whatever you need. And I thought, ‘Alright, now it’s gone a little too far for me.’” Nowadays, Parnevik is off the strict diet kicks and just simply tries to eat well.

Eccentricity, Edited

Some may view Parnevik—once one of the most unconventional and entertaining golfers, an open book who wore his heart on his sleeve—as a dying breed. But the charming and eccentric Swede still sees a few big personalities on tour that could rival his own swagger.

He name-checks seven-time PGA Tour winner Viktor Hovland, the black metal devotee with the ear-to-ear grin as a “pretty funny guy.” Still, he admits such throwbacks are rare, as ballooning purses have made players more corporate.

“When I started, most of the guys who played on the European Tour weren’t really doing it to make big money,” he said. “They could barely make ends meet from week to week. It was more of a lifestyle—it felt a bit like a traveling circus.”

Back then, Parnevik said, players didn’t return home between tournaments. Instead, they picked up a little money playing extra pro-ams—$500 here or there—which helped them pay for travel and hotels.

By the early 2000s, Tiger Woods domination transformed the economics of the sport. As interest and television ratings soared in tandem, sponsorship dollars piled up, fundamentally shifting professional golf’s financial landscape.

“Most players started thinking of golf like any business venture—they hired trainers, swing coaches, mental coaches,” Parnevik said. “Maybe some part of golf got a little more serious.”

These days, with constant social media scrutiny, he believes players are more guarded—which can make them appear “boring.”

“It’s a double-edged sword,” he said. “I love characters and so on but I also see guys get hammered if they say what they think.”

Parnevik was never one to play it safe—on the mic or in the mirror. When he showed up to a senior circuit event in Texas in 2016 wearing bright pink J.Lindeberg pants, it raised eyebrows and helped flip the script on golf fashion, foreshadowing a pastel wave that would come into vogue.

“Luckily I played well, because it could have been a completely different situation if I had a terrible day,” Parnevik remembered.

His flipped-brim look—the whole point was just to get a little suntan—might have presaged golf’s future cultural pervasiveness, but it was his early commitment to fitness that truly forecast where the game was headed.

“People were laughing back in the 1990s when we went to the gym rather than the bar after a round. They thought ‘you are going to workout now? We are going to go have a pint.’ But now, if you are not fit and don’t take care of yourself, you have no chance today.”

Even now, on the Champions Tour, Parnevik still crosses paths with fellow fitness pioneer Bernhard Langer—the original ageless wonder—who reminds him that longevity is earned.

And while Parnevik once pushed golf forward in his own unique way, he’s now keeping close tabs on another Swede doing the same. Ludvig Åberg, one of the most exciting young players in the game today, has his elder countryman’s attention and admiration.

“His technique is pretty much flawless,” Parnevik said. “He looks like he can’t miss a golf shot. Ludvig has a very sound golf swing and he seems like his mental side is very good. Any situation he’s put in, he’s doing really well. I think we are going to see him win a lot of majors in the future.”