Hacienda's Golf Blog

Consistency, balance and power are three of the most important aspects of the golf swing, and perhaps the best way to improve your swing in those areas is to increase your flexibility. Nearly all professional golfers understand the need to increase flexibility, or at least to maintain it as they age. And becoming more flexible isn’t just good for golf; it also has other life benefits. The simple act of stretching may help prevent injuries or even illness, and all it takes is 10 easy minutes a day. One of the best ways to improve your flexibility, and your golf swing, is yoga. We’ve listed four yoga poses the avid golfer can do to become more flexible and shore up the golf swing.

Great golf doesn’t just happen, and mere practice isn’t enough. Make no mistake: Practice, practice, practice...it certainly helps. But there’s more to it than that. An avid golfer lives the game all through the day, continually creating a mental image of the next stroke.

What does the avid golfer’s day look like?

Golf is an individual game, but it is not a loner’s game. From the outset, the golfer has a competitor to play with and against.  In the greater sense, though, golf is in good measure a social experience, especially at a golf club, where players form a community amongst themselves.

With shared interests and a unified set of values, a golfing community can generate a sense of belonging. This experience of being part of a community ultimately drives greater enjoyment of the game.

Even since Old Tom Morris won the first Open Championship in 1861, the game of golf has evolved tremendously, and so have the venues on which the game is played. Back then, Morris shot 163 over three 12-hole rounds at the Prestwick Golf Club, which to this day still holds up to the modern game.

Golf courses have not always had 18 holes. The St. Andrews Golf Links occupy a narrow strip of land along the sea, and as early as the 15th century, golfers at St. Andrews established a trench through the undulating terrain, playing to holes whose locations were dictated by topography. The course that emerged featured 11 holes, laid out end to end from the clubhouse to the far end of the property. A golfer would play the holes “out,” turned around, and then played the holes “in,” for a total of 22 holes.

Participation in golf has declined in recent years. By some estimates roughly 5 million golfers have left the game in the last decade, out of about 30 million. The reasons for this are mainly economic conditions, and that older players leaving the game are not being replaced by younger golfers at the same rate. Golf needs younger players to backfill the vacancies, to ensure a robust pipeline of players well into the future.

For a junior golfer that first tournament can be a real rite of passage. Tournament play gives an opportunity to test their mettle against their peers, to discover more profoundly their strengths and also those places that need improvement.  Much preparatory effort is needed to gear up for this  opportunity, in both physical and mental skills.

If it’s true that you get what you pay for, some 2.1 million golfers must be getting something extremely worthwhile. That’s how many individuals belong to private golf clubs, according to data from the National Golf Foundation.

All golfers struggle with their swing from time to time, even the greats. This can happen for a variety of reasons both physical -- such as injuries or aging -- and mental. It’s the mental aspect of playing good golf that golfers struggle with the most: