Golf injuries are often minor. But they can be painful. Usually, they involve strained muscles, swelled tendons, or torn cartilage, not broken bones. Sometimes, they keep you from playing for a day or two. Other times, they keep you from playing for several weeks. Few golfer injuries are serious enough to keep you from playing for longer than several weeks.
Weekend golfers tend injure themselves because they’re either out of shape or fail to warm up properly. They also injure themselves because of bad mechanics. Even players with low golf handicaps can have bad mechanics. Bad mechanics often result from trying to do more than you can do or copying the swings of professional players, which few of us can do. We just don’t have their flexibility.
Below we describe some of golf’s most frequent injuries along with golf tips on how to avoid injury. These tips won’t cut strokes from your golf handicap. Some may even divert you from a swing’s ideal biomechanics. But they will keep you playing.
Lead Wrist Tendonitis
Some golfers lack the strength to lead the club into impact with the back of the lead wrist, as is commonly taught in golf lessons, creating wrist overload. Hitting the ground during the swing can flatten your wrist angle at impact, stressing the wrist’s extensor tendons. Both actions can cause tendonitis in the lead wrist. Rotate your lead wrist about 30 degrees away from your target—at about 1:30 position on an imaginary clock face—to create the slight cup you need in your lead wrist at impact to prevent injury.
Lead Elbow Tendonitis
This injury is similar to lead wrist tendonitis. But it’s the extensor tendons on the outside of the elbow jarred at impact that start tearing away from the bone. (A less common injury we see in golf lessons is tendonitis on the inside of the trail elbow, caused by repeated straining and rotation of this arm through impact.) To avoid lead elbow tendonitis, keep the elbow straight but not locked. Think of the arm as staying “soft’ from start to finish. The downswing’s momentum pulls this arm straight automatically.
Rotator Cuff Tear
Several parts of the lead shoulder are at risk in the golf swing. But rotator cuff injuries (torn cartilage) traceable to the backswing are the most common. Keeping your lead arm tight to your chest as you swing back often tears the labrum that stabilizes the shoulder joint. You feel pain in your lead shoulder. Turning incorrectly in the backswing is the culprit here. We teach golfers in our golf instruction sessions to turn more and swing less. In other words, when your body stops turning, your arms should stop swinging.
Lead Knee Injury
Your lead knee takes a real beating when shifting forward in your swing. Thus, your knee absorbs significant torque and compression, which can injure the medial meniscus. This injury can lead to articular cartilage degeneration and arthritis. In a correctly executed golf swing, the lead knee shifts early in the downswing. Thus, the knee has a line that’s vertical or leaning away from the target, not leaning toward it. To avoid inuring your lead knee, encourage your hips to turn more and slide less by rotating your left foot 20 or 30 degrees outward at address.
[do action=”lose-the-back-pain”/]
Strained Lower Back
One common injury is a strained lower back. (We hear a lot about strained backs in golf instruction sessions.) The torque created by the modern swing pulls the ligaments, tendons, and muscles between the pelvis and lumbar spine. The shearing effect also wears away discs. A stained lower back can disable golfers for several weeks, depending on its severity. Stained lower backs can shorten golf careers if players aren’t careful, not to mention its effects on golf handicaps. To avoid straining your lower back, turn everything in unison. Hips and shoulders should rotate back and through together.
A strained lower back is probably golf’s most common injury. The other injuries mentioned here are also common. To remain pain free, learn to execute the golf swing correctly.
