Rick Keim, a 60-year-old golfer, always needed three to four holes each round before his swing loosened up. The stiffness in his joints impacted every shot. Off the course, his knees creaked every time he went up and down the stairs.
Then he stumbled on a daily supplement formulated to reduce stiffness and improve joint flexibility and comfort in weeks. After 30 days on it, the tightness that had dogged his opening holes was gone. He was hitting the ball 15 yards further off the tee, standing for long stretches, and feeling better than he had in years, until he ran out of his supply.
Within about a week, “the stiffness started creeping back in, and I could feel my joints tightening up again,” Keim said. “I won’t risk running out a second time.”
More than 2,000 golfers have already tried that supplement in 45 days since it came to market in mid-March, said John Hardesty, Chief Marketing Officer at Performance Golf, a golf improvement platform that created the product. The supplement, called SwingSmooth Pro, aims to tackle “stuck joints,” the hidden condition that erodes the games of millions of golfers at all levels aged 40 and above.
“Swinging a golf club breaks down your joints nearly three times more than running,” said Brixton Albert, Founder and CEO of Performance Golf. “When you’re swinging a golf club, you’re causing micro tears in your joint cartilage. They may not be as crippling as a torn rotator cuff, but they are like papercuts that aggravate your joints.”
Morning and pre-round stiffness has been the number one driver for the adoption of SwingSmooth Pro, Albert added, noting that the result most golfers are excited about is “regaining the distance they’ve lost over the years due to their body breaking down.”
Golf participation numbers have climbed in recent years within the UK and worldwide. In Great Britain, participation nearly doubled from 2.5 million in 2017 to 4.8 million in 2021, according to data cited in a study of UK-based golfers conducted by Sports Marketing Surveys.
Meanwhile, the physical toll players carry into each round has increased. Over half of regular golfers sustain an injury during their lifetime, with the lower back and elbow bearing the brunt of that strain among everyday players, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis of golfer injuries cited in a study published in The Physician and Sportsmedicine.
Golfers experienced over 41 injuries for every 1,000 hours, with the lower back emerging as the most frequently reported injury site at 9.94 injuries per 1,000 hours, according to a separate study involving over 300 UK participants. Those findings reinforce a reality many golfers experience. Performance is driven as much by the wear and tear accumulating in the body as by the mechanics of the swing itself. Over time, the repeated force of the swing can leave its mark on the back, joints, and connective tissue.
Yet for many everyday golfers, instruction and equipment remain central to the search for more distance, while the body’s role in the swing receives far less attention.
“Your body is a fifteenth club in the bag [because] it’s the body that controls your swing — your consistency, your tempo and your distance. Not just your equipment, not your mechanics, not your swing coach,” said Dr Troy Van Biezen, the performance doctor who formulated the product.
Van Biezen has spent more than two decades working with the best athletes across multiple sports, including several World #1 golfers, major champions, and countless PGA Tour winners. His work does not stop with the pros. Over 50,000 everyday golfers have passed through the doors of his performance clinic in Dallas.
“I’ve watched golfers spend years on lessons and equipment while their body quietly locks down from the inside,” Van Biezen said.
The SwingSmooth Pro is the first triple-action joint flexibility formula, which combines three clinically studied ingredients at doses proven to be effective in human trials. Its ingredients include 100 mg of AprèsFlex®, shown to increase joint flexibility by over 16% in five days and reduce stiffness by nearly 50% in a month, 200 mg of ExceptionHYAL® Jump, shown to improve joint comfort by nearly 40% in eight weeks, and 40 mg of a collagen from Lonza that outperforms glucosamine and chondroitin at every stage tested in comparative studies, according to the company’s press release. Its product page says the supplement is free of additives, and harsh chemicals.
“Golfers on average have been buying supplies for between 3-4 months,” Hardesty said, noting that the benefits of SwingSmooth Pro compound after 90 days of consistent use.
The wager behind SwingSmooth Pro is that many golfers have been trying to address a physical problem with technical tools. Performance Golf holds that distance, consistency and ease of movement have as much to do with joint freedom as with mechanics and that everyday players are increasingly starting to recognize the difference.
