Golf injuries: where they land and what the rates mean
Warning signs, and when to get help
What a golf swing asks of you
One side of your body does something the other side does not. A right-handed golfer turns away from the target, then unwinds through the ball with the left hip and the left knee taking the weight while the right arm and wrist drive the club, and that sequence happens between 60 and 120 times in a round, plus the practice balls. Nothing else in most people's week rehearses it.
Two more things shape where the soreness turns up. A golf shot is struck downward into the ground, so the club, the turf and sometimes a mat send force back up the arms. And the walking adds up: four hours and five or six miles for a round on foot, carried or pulled, often on slopes.
Then there is the part nobody plans for. Carrying your own bag was reported as hazardous to the lower back, the shoulder and the ankle in a retrospective study of 703 golfers (Gosheger and colleagues, 2003). A trolley changes that, and so does splitting a long session into two shorter ones.
What are the most common golf injuries?
The lower back is first in every data set anybody has collected, and it is first by a clear margin. A retrospective survey of 303 UK golfers put the lower back top of every site it measured, at 9.94 per 1,000 hours on an interval of 7.48 to 13.22, and recorded a mean of 54 days lost before full recovery against a standard deviation of 89 (Williams and colleagues, 2025). That spread tells you something on its own: some golfers were back in a fortnight and some were out for most of a season.
After the back, the order depends on who was asked. The same UK survey named the elbow as the other leading site. A 1996 review of injury frequency reported back and elbow first in male amateurs, the lower back and wrist in male professionals, and the elbow followed by the lower back in female amateurs (McCarroll, 1996). Elbow injuries were reported in 4 percent of professional and 24 percent of amateur golfers in one of the series collected in a 2022 review of upper body golf injuries (Creighton, Cheng and Press, 2022).
The split that matters more than the ranking is sudden against gradual. Of the injuries reported by those 703 golfers, 82.6 percent were overuse and 17.4 percent came from a single traumatic event, and the severity was minor in 51.5 percent of cases, moderate in 26.8 percent and major in 21.7 percent (Gosheger and colleagues, 2003). The UK survey found the same shape, with repetitive movement injuries at 22.00 per 1,000 hours against 10.79 for acute ones (Williams and colleagues, 2025). Most golf injuries give you weeks of warning. The warning is usually ignored because it is mild.
How likely am I to get hurt playing golf?
This is where the published numbers stop agreeing. Knowing why beats trusting whichever one you meet first, and you will meet all of them.
Prospective studies, where golfers are followed forward and injuries are recorded as they happen, report 0.28 to 0.60 injuries per 1,000 hours of play in amateurs (Murray and colleagues, 2020). The 2025 UK survey, which asked golfers to remember a year, reported 41.26 per 1,000 hours with a confidence interval of 35.96 to 47.33 (Williams and colleagues, 2025). Those two figures differ by more than sixtyfold, and the difference is not golf. A survey that asks people to recall every ache counts things a prospective study never hears about, and the definition of an injury differs between them.
The pooled figure most useful to a club golfer uses rounds instead of hours. A 2024 meta-analysis screened 999 studies, included 7 with 269,754 athlete exposures, and reported 2.5 injuries per 1,000 exposures with a confidence interval of 0.9 to 7.5, where one exposure is a full 18 holes. Split by level, that was 1.3 per 1,000 rounds in amateurs across five studies, with a confidence interval of 0.5 to 4.0, against 8.5 in professionals, from 7.6 to 9.4, from a single study (Kuitunen and Ponkilainen, 2024). The paper says plainly that reporting in this field was limited.
Level matters more than most pages admit. A meta-analysis of 20 studies and 9,221 golfers found lifetime injury prevalence of 73.5 percent in professionals against 56.6 percent in amateurs, a relative risk of 1.50, with professionals significantly more likely to report a lower back injury and a hand or wrist injury (Williamson and colleagues, 2024). So a tour statistic is not your statistic. If you play once a week and hit a bucket of balls on a Thursday, the amateur figures are yours.
Lead side or trail side: which hand do you play with?
Almost every page about golf injuries is a list of body parts. Very few ask the question that decides which of those parts is likely to be yours.
Golf is an asymmetrical sport, so its injury patterns are not symmetrical either. The 2020 international consensus statement recommends recording the side of the injured body part and the handedness of the golfer, and it sets the vocabulary: in a right-handed golfer, the left side is the lead side and the right side is the trail side (Murray and colleagues, 2020). It had to recommend it because most studies had not been doing it, which is why we cannot give you a reliable table of lead against trail by body part.
Where a side pattern is reported, it is useful immediately. For the elbow, pain on the inner side tends to sit in the trail arm and pain on the outer side in the lead arm of a right-handed golfer (Creighton, Cheng and Press, 2022). For the back, golfers often describe one-sided pain, and lower back pain on one side works through what that does and does not tell you.
So before you read any further, settle two things: which hand you play with, and which side the pain is on. Left-handers, read every mention of lead and trail from your own stance rather than swapping the words for left and right.
Is golf good for you, on balance?
Yes, and that sits oddly alongside everything above, so it belongs on the same page. The scoping review of 301 studies found golf provides moderate intensity physical activity, is associated with improved cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic profiles and with improved wellness, and described golf injury incidence as moderate compared with other sports, with the back most frequently involved (Murray and colleagues, 2017). Accidental head injuries are rare in that review, and it notes they can be serious when they happen, which is why the head and eye lines are in the warning list below. If a ball or a club does catch you on the head, going back to golf afterwards runs through the staged return at concussion recovery and return to play, and finishing the round is not part of it.
The practical reading is not that golf is risky. The sport does you good and brings a predictable set of grumbles with it, and the grumbles respond well to being taken seriously early.
Where to start if something already hurts
Go by the site, and then by the side. A back that aches after a round or stiffens up the next morning belongs with golf back pain first, and with the low back pain program for the exercises and the dose. An elbow goes to golf elbow pain, which sorts out whether you are dealing with golfer's elbow on the inner side or tennis elbow on the outer, because a golfer is more likely to get the second one despite the names.
For the work that is not about pain, there are two separate jobs and people mix them up constantly. Golf mobility is the weekly job of getting hips, mid back and shoulders moving. The golf warm up is the ten minutes before you tee off, which is a different task with different evidence behind it.
If you have had a hip or a knee replaced and want to know when the course is back on, golf after a hip or knee replacement is the page, and your surgical team's plan comes before anything written here. Older golfers who want the strength and steadiness side will find it in strong and steady for older adults. Readers who have come over from a racket sport, or who play one alongside golf, can compare notes at padel and pickleball, where the elbow is the headline complaint too, and elbow pain when lifting covers the version that shows up away from sport.
When to see a physio
Two weeks of the same complaint is the usual trigger, and so is a problem that comes back reliably every time you play two days running. A physiotherapist, or a physical therapist if you are in the United States, will want to know your handedness, which side hurts, what your playing and practice week looked like in the fortnight before it started, and whether you walk or ride. That history is usually more informative than anything they find by pressing on the sore spot.
Come sooner if the pain wakes you, if it has started to limit things off the course, or if you have quietly changed your swing to avoid it. Read the warning list below once properly, and follow the timing each line gives rather than waiting for your next game to see how it goes.
In this topic
- Golf after a hip replacement, and after a knee replacement
Golf after a hip replacement, and after a knee replacement: the return rates, what no guideline sets, and how a swing meets the restrictions.
- Golf back pain: what the swing does and does not explain
Golf back pain explained: why swing faults are a weaker explanation than they sound, what really predicts it, and how to keep playing while it settles.
- Golf elbow pain: which side it is on, and what that means
Golf elbow pain is more often on the outside than the inside. How to tell which you have, what the swing, grip, mat and divot change, and when to act.
- Golf mobility: what the hip, mid back and shoulder really need
Golf mobility, honestly: what the hip and mid back give a swing, why flexibility is not the distance answer, and a weekly routine worth doing.
- A golf warm up for 10 minutes, with no driving range
A 10 minute golf warm up for club players with no range: what to do in what order, what the evidence supports, and what it cannot promise.
Related exercise programs
Warning signs
Get emergency help now
- Emergency: if chest pain, pressure or tightness does not ease quickly when you rest, spreads to your arm, neck, jaw, stomach or back, or comes with sweating, feeling sick, feeling light-headed or being short of breath, call emergency services straight away, as this can be a heart attack. If it eases quickly and none of these happen, get medical advice the same day, and do not exercise again until you have been checked.
- Emergency: any sign of a stroke, even if it goes away. That means a face that droops on one side, an arm you cannot lift or keep up, slurred or muddled speech, weakness or numbness on one side of your body or face, sudden blurred vision, double vision or loss of sight, trouble swallowing, sudden dizziness with unsteadiness or falling over, a sudden severe headache, or a sudden fall where your legs give way but you do not black out (a drop attack). Call emergency services straight away.
- Emergency: after a ball, a club, a collision or a fall to the face, any change to your sight, severe pain in the eye, a headache or finding light hard to bear, feeling sick or being sick, an eye you cannot move or keep open, or blood or pus coming from the eye. The same applies if something has pierced the eye or hit it at high speed, or if a strong chemical has gone into it. Go to an emergency department or call emergency services straight away, and do not drive yourself.
- Emergency: after a knock to the head, being very drowsy or finding it hard to keep your eyes open, confusion, a fit (seizure), new weakness or numbness anywhere in your body, new trouble understanding, speaking, walking or keeping your balance, new problems seeing or hearing, clear fluid coming from your ears or nose, bleeding from your ears or bruising behind them, a black eye when your eye was not hit, a dent in your head or a wound with something stuck in it, or a change in behavior. Call emergency services straight away. These can be signs of an injury to the brain.
- Emergency: after a knock to the head, you were knocked out, even for a moment, you cannot remember what happened just before or after, you have had a headache ever since, or you are being sick (vomiting). The same applies, even if you feel fine, if you take medicine that thins your blood, other than aspirin on its own, have a bleeding or clotting condition, have had brain surgery in the past, or had been drinking alcohol or taking drugs when it happened. Go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
- Emergency: severe neck pain after a knock to the head, whatever the fall or the knock was like. Keep still and call emergency services, and do not let anyone move you until someone trained has checked your neck. If the neck pain only starts later and nobody has checked your neck since, go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
- Emergency: after a knock to the head, swelling, a deep cut or severe pain at the exact spot that was hit. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. These can be signs of a broken skull.
- Emergency: a knock to the head in a high-energy accident, even if you feel completely well. That means a fall from a height of more than 1 meter (about 3 feet) or more than 5 stairs, a crash at high speed, a car that rolled over, being thrown from a vehicle, being hit by a vehicle while walking or cycling, a bike crash, an accident on a quad bike or similar motorized vehicle, a fall from a horse, a diving accident, or any other heavy, fast impact to the head. Call emergency services straight away, without waiting to see how you feel. A high-energy head injury is a reason for emergency assessment on its own, with no symptoms needed.
- Emergency: numbness, tingling or altered feeling around or under your genitals, between your inner thighs, or around your bottom (anus), for example it feels different when you wipe after using the toilet. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. This can be a sign of pressure on the bundle of nerves at the base of the spine (cauda equina syndrome), which needs emergency treatment.
- Emergency: you find it hard to start peeing, cannot pee, cannot feel yourself peeing or cannot control when you pee, or you do not notice when you need to poo or cannot control when you poo, and this is not normal for you. The same applies to a new change in how your genitals feel during sex, new trouble getting or keeping an erection, new trouble ejaculating, or new trouble reaching orgasm. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. These can also be signs of cauda equina syndrome.
- Emergency: sciatica in both legs, or pain, tingling, numbness or weakness in both legs. The same applies if you lose feeling in one leg. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
- Emergency: your arm, hand or fingers turn cold, pale, blue or gray compared with the other side. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. The blood supply to the arm may be blocked.
Get help today
- Same day: you have had a knock to the head and you take aspirin on its own, without any of the emergency signs above. Get medical advice the same day. Aspirin on its own is the only blood thinning medicine left out of the emergency line above, and the NHS still asks anybody taking a medicine that thins the blood to get urgent advice after a head injury.
- Same day: a leg or foot that is getting weaker, for example your foot drags, catches on the ground or slaps down when you walk (foot drop). Get medical advice the same day. If the weakness is getting worse by the hour, go to an emergency department.
- Same day: sudden new dizziness, or feeling faint or unsteady, without any of the stroke signs above. Stop, sit down and get medical advice the same day. If you faint, it does not settle within a few minutes of sitting still, or you cannot stand or walk steadily, call emergency services.
- Same day: you blacked out or fainted, even for a moment. Get medical advice the same day. Call emergency services instead if the person is not breathing, cannot be woken within 1 minute, has not fully recovered or has trouble speaking or moving, has chest pain or a pounding, fluttering or irregular heartbeat, fainted while exercising or lying down, is shaking or jerking, or was badly hurt.
- Same day: back pain after a minor fall or strain if you are older, have low bone density (osteoporosis) or have taken steroid tablets for a long time. Get medical advice the same day. Until it has been checked, stop the exercises and keep away from lifting, bending forward and twisting, because those load a bone in the spine that may be broken.
- Same day: new hip or groin pain after a fall, even a small one, if you are older, have low bone density (osteoporosis) or have taken steroid tablets for a long time, even if you can still walk. Get medical advice the same day, and say that you fell and that your bones are thin. Until it has been checked, stop the exercises and keep as much weight off that leg as you can, using your stick, frame or crutches if you have them and asking someone for help to move about, because a crack in the hip that has not slipped yet can slip when you walk on it, and a hip that has slipped usually needs a bigger operation than one that has not. A broken hip is not always obvious at first, and a first X-ray does not always show it, so if you have been checked and sent home and you still cannot walk on that leg, or the pain is getting worse, go back and say so.
- Same day: a calf or thigh that is newly swollen or getting more swollen, warm, tender, red or darker than usual, has swollen veins that are sore to touch, or has a throbbing or cramping pain that does not fit your injury or condition, or that feels different from normal muscle soreness after exercise. This can be a sign of a blood clot (deep vein thrombosis), especially after surgery, an injury, time in a cast or boot, a long trip or a spell of being much less mobile than usual. Get medical advice the same day. If you are also short of breath or have chest pain, call emergency services.
- Same day: severe pain that comes on suddenly or is getting worse quickly. Get medical advice the same day.
- Same day: the pain is there at night or at rest and keeps getting worse. If you are being treated for cancer now, contact your cancer team the same day.
Book an appointment
- Within a day or two: the pain is there at night or at rest and keeps getting worse. If you have had cancer, now or in the past, or are losing weight without trying, see your doctor sooner, within a day or two, and mention it. This applies even if the pain is not getting worse.
- Within a few days: the pain is there at night or at rest and keeps getting worse. See your doctor within a few days.
Common questions
What are the most common golf injuries?
The lower back comes first in every set of figures anyone has collected, and the elbow is usually next for amateurs. In 303 UK golfers, the lower back had the highest incidence at 9.94 injuries per 1,000 hours, with a confidence interval of 7.48 to 13.22, and the authors named the lower back and the elbow as the two leading sites in what was largely an amateur group (Williams and colleagues, 2025). A 1996 review of golf injury frequency put back and elbow injuries first in male amateurs, the lower back and wrist in male professionals, and the elbow followed by the lower back in female amateurs (McCarroll, 1996). A retrospective study of 703 golfers found 82.6 percent of the injuries reported were overuse rather than one sudden event (Gosheger and colleagues, 2003). So the typical golf injury is not dramatic: it is a site that has been grumbling for a few weeks and got worse after a busy fortnight.
Is golf bad for your back?
Golf asks a lot of a lumbar spine, and that is not the same as the sport being bad for it. Reviews put golf-related low back pain at roughly a quarter of all golf injuries, with reported rates from 18.2 percent to 54 percent depending on who was asked and how (Lindsay and Vandervoort, 2014). One survey quoted in that review followed 196 new golfers, found about 25 percent had back pain over a year, and reported that most of them did not believe golf had caused it. What the research does not support is the popular explanation: a systematic review of 19 studies concluded there is no clear evidence linking swing mechanics to the development of low back pain in golfers, and found increasing age, body mass and a previous history of back pain in the pooled data instead (Smith and colleagues, 2018). Golf back pain goes through that properly.
How many rounds a week is too many?
There is no published number, and the only hint comes with a caution attached. A meta-analysis of 20 studies and 9,221 golfers found that two of its included studies reported greater injury risk in amateurs playing more than three and more than four rounds a week, while injury frequency overall was not associated with age or sex (Williamson and colleagues, 2024). Those are two studies inside a review, not a limit. What clinicians watch is change rather than total: the fortnight you went from one round to three, added a tournament, or started hitting two hundred balls a week usually contains the explanation for a flare. Build the week up in steps and the sore spots stay small.
Does golf count as exercise?
Yes, and the evidence for that is stronger than the evidence for most things on this page. A scoping review of 301 studies reported that golf provides moderate intensity physical activity and is associated with improved cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic profiles, along with improved wellness, while noting that the evidence on golf and mental health was limited (Murray and colleagues, 2017). The same review described the incidence of golfing injury as moderate, with back injuries the most frequent, and said accidental head injuries are rare but can have serious consequences. Walking the course rather than riding it is where most of the activity comes from, so the decision about a cart changes the health side of the ledger as well as the injury side.
Which injuries hit the lead side and which the trail side?
The honest answer is that golf is asymmetrical and the reporting is not good enough to give you a table. The 2020 international consensus statement says golf's injury patterns are non-symmetrical, recommends recording both the injured side and the golfer's handedness, and defines the lead side as the left in a right-handed golfer and the trail side as the right (Murray and colleagues, 2020). The reason it had to recommend that is that studies mostly did not do it. One pattern is reported in readable text: for the elbow, medial pain tends to sit in the trail arm and lateral pain in the lead arm of a right-handed golfer (Creighton, Cheng and Press, 2022). That is the one worth knowing, and golf elbow pain uses it to work out which page is yours.
References
- Kuitunen I, Ponkilainen VT. Injury incidence in golf: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Irish Journal of Medical Science. 2024;193(6):2803-2811. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11845-024-03759-6
- Murray A, Junge A, Robinson PG, Bizzini M, et al. International consensus statement: methods for recording and reporting of epidemiological data on injuries and illnesses in golf. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2020;54(19):1136-1141. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2020-102380
- Murray AD, Daines L, Archibald D, Hawkes RA, et al. The relationships between golf and health: a scoping review. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2017;51(1):12-19. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2016-096625
- Williamson TR, Kay RS, Robinson PG, Murray AD, Clement ND. Epidemiology of musculoskeletal injury in professional and amateur golfers: a systematic review and meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2024;58(11):606-614. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2023-107324
- Williams A, Murray A, Sorbie GG. Epidemiology of injuries in UK based golfers: a retrospective study. The Physician and Sportsmedicine. 2025;53(2):152-158. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913847.2024.2432859
- Smith JA, Hawkins A, Grant-Beuttler M, Beuttler R, Lee SP. Risk factors associated with low back pain in golfers: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Health. 2018;10(6):538-546. https://doi.org/10.1177/1941738118795425
- Lindsay DM, Vandervoort AA. Golf-related low back pain: a review of causative factors and prevention strategies. Asian Journal of Sports Medicine. 2014;5(4):e24289. https://doi.org/10.5812/asjsm.24289
- Creighton A, Cheng J, Press J. Upper body injuries in golfers. Current Reviews in Musculoskeletal Medicine. 2022;15(6):483-499. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12178-022-09787-y
- Gosheger G, Liem D, Ludwig K, Greshake O, Winkelmann W. Injuries and overuse syndromes in golf. American Journal of Sports Medicine. 2003;31(3):438-443. https://doi.org/10.1177/03635465030310031901
- McCarroll JR. The frequency of golf injuries. Clinics in Sports Medicine. 1996;15(1):1-7. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0278-5919(20)30154-X
- NHS. Chest pain. Page last reviewed 8 August 2023. https://www.nhs.uk/symptoms/chest-pain/
- NHS. Symptoms of a stroke. Page last reviewed 12 September 2024. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stroke/symptoms/
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- NHS. DVT (deep vein thrombosis). Page last reviewed 30 April 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/deep-vein-thrombosis-dvt/
- NHS. Falls. Page last reviewed 6 March 2025. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/falls/
- NHS. Fainting. https://www.nhs.uk/symptoms/fainting/
Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-11-06.
This page is general education, not a diagnosis or a personal treatment plan. See a physiotherapist or doctor for advice about your own situation.