Sports medicine seminar: Johnny Watterson talks to Orlaith Buckley, guest speaker at tomorrow's sports medicine seminar in Dublin's Royal College of Surgeons

Lets face it. Golf is a sport many people take up when they are finished playing everything else. Golf doesn't distinguish between fat, thin, large, small, active or lazy. Everyone can be good, bad or injured. The sense around most courses is that plenty of players would rather spend €400 on a new top of the range driver than warm up or stretch before they tee off.

Another common complaint is from the player who gets a sore back, painful shoulder or stiff neck after playing for a couple of hours. It happens to professionals as well as amateurs but now in Europe physiotherapists have teamed up with swing gurus and players to ensure golfers swing better and stay injury free.

"It can be technical but there are a handful of physiotherapists world wide, who analyse a person's posture," says physiotherapist Orlaith Buckley, who is a guest speaker at tomorrow's sports medicine seminar in Dublin's Royal College of Surgeons.

"They then compare the technical and physical and try to decide whether a flaw is in a person's swing, purely technical, or whether it is down to their inability to move their body into position.

"Generally what we find is that it is their inability to move their body that has an impact somewhere along the chain, which causes an injury to occur."

Currently working with a Ryder Cup player as well as with junior and amateur players with the Golf Union of Ireland, the approach is relatively new in Europe, although in Australia they have being doing it for 16 years. The Titleist Performance Institute in the US has also taken up the baton in the last few years.

"Research has shown that if golfers improve their posture, they actually improve accuracy and distance. Most people think that to invest in the latest driver will gain them yards but one bad shot and the bad memories come back and next thing they are hacking it around the golf course."

Now professional players are looking at their swings from a physical viewpoint in an effort to find out whether their limitations, muscle groups and body shapes are actually affecting their swing. There is little point in a golfer looking for a certain consistent swing if their anatomy won't allow them to physically do it.

The reality is, however, that professionals can improve their swings much quicker than amateurs because they have more feel for what they are doing and can instinctively apply minor adjustments.

"Average club players are usually in a sedentary job, where they are sitting all day. In the sitting posture you are actually switching off the muscles you need for a golf swing and you tighten up the wrong muscles. Then it's straight from the car to the tee. They've done nothing to stretch out of the sitting position. A lot of golfers wouldn't associate pain that they may have as caused by their golf swing.

"There are a few things that are starting to pop up and it's the ability of the body to move in separate body parts. The upper part separates from the lower part in the back swing.

"One of the things we find is that the right-arm position at the top of the back swing (elbow should be tucked in but it often flies out) is an issue across the board."

Statistics appear to back up the importance of the thinking with eight out of 10 players on the Nike Tour coming from the country that has most embraced it, Australia.

Adam Scott leads that group but all have come up through the ranks learning about the mechanics and physical side of posture as much as the technical issues of swing.

"There are a lot of things going on now," says Buckley.

"If Europe doesn't embrace it they will be left behind." (Seminar runs from 9am to 7.45pm tomorrow at RCSI's Faculty of Sports and Exercise Medicine)