Part of Golf injuries: where they land and what the rates mean
Golf after a hip replacement, and after a knee replacement
Warning signs, and when to get help
Your team first, and then the numbers
Before any figure on this page, one thing. The surgeon who operated on you and the hospital team looking after your recovery decide when and how you go back, because they know how the joint was reached, how stable it felt when they tested it, and what your bone was like. Nothing written here clears you to swing a club.
With that said, most golfers are given very little to work with, which is why this page exists. You will have been handed a sheet about stairs, driving and wound care, and in most cases not a word about golf.
Can you play golf after a hip replacement?
Usually, and the hip is the half of this question with the firmer answer behind it.
A systematic review and meta-analysis pooled 23 retrospective studies of golfers after a hip, knee or shoulder replacement. Return to golf came out at 90 percent after hip replacement, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 82 to 98, drawn from 4 studies. The overall figure across all three joints was 80 percent, with an interval of 70 to 89.9. The mean age of the patients was 66.8 years (Robinson and colleagues, 2023).
That hip interval, 82 to 98, is the tightest in the paper, and it supports a plain statement: the great majority of golfers who had a hip replaced played golf again. Two things qualify it. Every included study was retrospective, so they describe golfers who did go back rather than people who were given permission and followed forward. And a pooled rate is not a prediction for one hip.
Golf is also on the gentler side of the published activity lists. OrthoInfo names golfing among the lower impact fitness activities it treats as preferable to high-impact ones, and it attaches no timeframe to that mention. Being on the gentler list is not permission for your hip, and it is not a date either. The wider question of which activities a replaced hip is suited to is covered on our page about returning to activity after a hip replacement, which this page does not repeat.
When can you play golf after a hip replacement?
Nobody has published a date, and we looked. On the national patient pages, read in November 2026, golf appeared zero times on the NHS page about recovering from a hip replacement, zero times on the NHS page about recovering from a knee replacement, zero times on healthdirect's hip replacement page, zero times on Healthify's, zero times in OrthoInfo's knee replacement exercise guide, and exactly once in OrthoInfo's page on activities after a hip replacement, in a list, with no timing attached.
The clearest timing figure with a named group behind it comes from a survey of 120 members of the European Knee Associates, who rated 47 sports across four periods after surgery. Golf fell among the sports recommended beyond 12 weeks after a total knee replacement, and the paper records its own level of evidence as the lowest grade, which is expert opinion (Thaler and colleagues, 2021).
It is not the only surgeon survey, and the other one waits longer. A 1993 study of 83 active golfers after a knee replacement reported that members of The Knee Society allowed their patients to play golf and recommended waiting approximately 18 weeks after surgery before beginning (Mallon and Callaghan, 1993). Two surveys of knee surgeons, roughly 12 weeks and about 18 weeks, is a spread of six weeks on the one question everybody wants answered.
So when a page or a forum post tells you 12 weeks, what you are reading is surgeon opinion about knees, presented by its own authors as opinion, and another group of knee surgeons said about 18. That is not a reason to ignore either figure. Get the date from the surgeon who has seen your scans rather than from the internet, and ask it as three questions instead of one: when can I walk a course, when can I make a slow swing without a ball, and when can I hit a full shot.
The averages for when people did get back are worth having alongside that. Mean time to return was 4.4 months across 9 studies, with a confidence interval of 3.2 to 6, and that figure covers hips, knees and shoulders together rather than being split by joint (Robinson and colleagues, 2023). An average like that describes when people did go back, not a schedule anybody set for them, so it is not a date to aim at, and reaching it is not a sign that you are ready.
What about after a knee replacement?
Shorter answer, and a more uncertain one. The same meta-analysis pooled return to golf at 70 percent after knee replacement from 6 studies, and the confidence interval runs from 39 to 100 percent (Robinson and colleagues, 2023). A range that wide is close to saying nobody knows.
The knee has its own page here and it goes much further than this one does, including what the swing does to the lead knee and what imaging has shown about implant movement during a golf swing. If the knee is your joint, read sports after a knee replacement: golf, cycling and tennis rather than this section, and the total knee replacement program for the rehabilitation itself. If you had a partial rather than a total knee replacement, the plan is different again and partial knee replacement rehab is the page. Every knee study named on this page was done in total knee replacement, so none of the figures here is a figure for a partial knee.
What the national instructions mean for a golf swing
Here is the gap this page was written to fill. Two sets of instructions that every patient is given have never, as far as we can find, been read against what a golf swing actually does.
The NHS page on recovering from a hip replacement names three things to leave out of your exercise while the hip is recovering: jumping, sudden turns, and anything that carries a high risk of a fall. It also says not to bend your hip more than 90 degrees, which is a right angle. The same list also says not to bend down to touch your feet or ankles, and not to sit with your legs crossed (NHS, 2024). The NHS page on recovering from a knee replacement says to avoid twisting your knee, bending down and reaching up as much as possible (NHS, 2026).
Now put a round of golf next to those. The downswing and follow through are a fast turn on a planted lead leg, which is what a sudden turn means. The knee of that lead leg rotates under load, which is the twist. Teeing a ball up and picking it out of the hole are deep bends, and both are often done in one movement with a turn in them. That pair is the instruction about not bending down to touch your feet or ankles arriving on a golf course, twice on every hole. And the combination is the part to take seriously rather than either half of it, because the positions that take a new hip to the edge of its socket are combinations rather than single movements, so a bend with a turn in it asks more than a bend and a turn do separately. Reaching into a bag or a hole, kneeling to read a line, stepping into a bunker and walking a slope in the wet all belong in the same conversation.
Two things follow, and neither is a rule we are making up. First, those instructions are written for the recovery period, and your team decides when that period ends for you, which is exactly why the date is theirs to give. Second, the parts of a round are not equal, so they can be cleared separately. Walking nine holes with a trolley, putting and chipping, a slow half swing with a wedge, a full swing without a ball, a full swing with a ball, and 18 holes on foot are six different requests, and a sensible team will say yes to them at different times.
Our pages on hip precautions and how long they last, things to avoid after a hip replacement and things to avoid after a knee replacement sort the restrictions by how firm each one is. Which movements your own protocol limits depends on how your hip was reached, and the direction can point the opposite way. The list most people have heard of belongs to the approach from the back: no deep bending, no crossing the legs, no turning the leg inward. After an approach from the front, many teams give fewer restrictions and some give none, and where cautions are given they tend to point the other way, toward taking the leg back behind you and turning it outward, and those two together more than either alone. Our hip precautions page sets out both lists with the studies behind them, and until you know which one is yours, the cautious option is to keep to all of them rather than to the familiar one.
So the 90 degree rule is not the whole of anybody's list, and for some readers it is not on their list at all. We publish no table of swing positions by surgical approach, because no readable source supports one, and building one out of the approach, the swing phase, your handedness and which leg was done is how a page ends up confidently telling somebody to do the one thing their hip cannot take. Ask your surgeon which way they went in, and ask about both directions, deep bending and taking the leg back and turning it outward, rather than only the one you have heard of.
Your own hardware comes into this too. How the parts were fixed changes what is holding them while you are getting going again: cement grips as soon as it sets, while an uncemented implant is held at first by the press fit of metal into bone and only later by bone growing onto it, which is a process over the early months rather than something finished on the day. Whether that changes your dates is a question for your surgeon, and it is not one the golf studies answer. The implant design has been compared once: in a survey of 54 golfers after a knee replacement, two designs, cruciate retaining and posterior stabilised, came out the same for pain, for performance and for how stable the knee felt during the swing (Tramer and colleagues, 2022).
Does it matter which leg they operated on?
Almost certainly, and this is the question the research has only just begun asking.
Golf is asymmetrical. The 2020 international consensus statement on recording golf injuries says the sport's injury patterns are not symmetrical and recommends recording the golfer's handedness, defining the lead side as the left in a right-handed golfer (Murray and colleagues, 2020). The lead leg takes the weight and the rotation through impact. The trail leg pushes and then unloads.
The oldest evidence here is also the largest, and it points the same way. In a 1993 survey of 83 active golfers after a knee replacement, the golfers whose left knee had been replaced reported more pain during and after play than the golfers whose right knee had been replaced, and the difference was statistically significant (Mallon and Callaghan, 1993). That study recorded which side the operation was on rather than which hand the golfer played with, so it is not quite the lead and trail question, but most golfers are right handed and for them the left knee is the lead one. More recently, a prospective study of 10 recreational golfers after knee replacement, mean age 72, reported that half of them had been operated on the lead leg, which is the first time anyone reported it as a lead and trail split (Ledford and colleagues, 2026). Ten patients is ten, and the same distinction has not been applied to the hip at all.
Neither leg is the easy one. A trail leg is doing a different job, not no job, and the side is something for your team to work with rather than a reason to assume either leg is in the clear.
So the practical step is yours rather than the literature's. Say which hand you play with and which leg was replaced, in those words, at your next appointment. Nobody will assume it, and a left-handed golfer with a new left hip is in the opposite situation from a right-handed golfer with one.
What does not seem to change, and what nobody can tell you
There is real reassurance in the figures. Handicaps barely move: the meta-analysis found a mean change of about zero across 8 studies, with a confidence interval spanning roughly 2 strokes in either direction (Robinson and colleagues, 2023), and both a survey of 54 golfers and a prospective group of 10 after knee replacement found no significant change (Tramer and colleagues, 2022; Ledford and colleagues, 2026). Pain during the swing tends to improve, falling from a mean of 6.4 to 1.8 on a 10 point scale in that survey of 54.
The studies behind that average do not all agree, though. The largest of the older knee series, 83 active golfers surveyed in 1993, reported handicaps rising by a mean of 4.6 strokes and drives getting shorter (Mallon and Callaghan, 1993). A pooled mean of about zero is an average across studies that disagree, not a finding that every handicap holds.
Now the blunt part, because it is the question everybody wants answered. The same meta-analysis states that there were no studies presenting factors associated with return to golf (Robinson and colleagues, 2023). Its search ran to March 2021, and the one association published since is not something you can use beforehand: in that survey of 54 knees, the golfers who got back had better knee scores afterward than the ones who did not (Tramer and colleagues, 2022), which describes how a knee turned out rather than telling you in advance how yours will. So nobody has published what predicts whether you personally get back on a course. Where you read a confident list of predictors, treat it as reasoning rather than a finding, and if you want an estimate for yourself, the person who can give you the best one is your surgeon.
Going back by what the course asks, not by the week
None of this starts before your team has said you can start, and the order below does not shorten the wait for that. No published protocol sets this order. It is ordinary practice reasoning about which parts of a round ask the most of a joint, and the only order that counts is the one your own team gives you. Once they have, the pattern that works is unglamorous: put the parts back one at a time, and change one thing a week rather than three.
One thing belongs before the first rung rather than after it. If you have fallen in the past year, feel unsteady on your feet, or take medicines that make you dizzy, ask your doctor or physio about a falls check before you plan a round. A course is four or five hours on ground that is never level, and a fall is the one thing on this page that can undo the operation in a second: a new hip can come out of its socket, and the bone around either joint can break. Keep a hand on the trolley on slopes, or take the cart, stay off bunker faces and wet banks, and play the first rounds with somebody rather than on your own.
Walking comes first, on its own, before any club. It means the walking you already do rather than the walking a round asks for, and it is built off the course first. For a sense of the gap, the walking that the hip replacement program builds toward is 20 to 30 minutes at a time, which is a long way short of four or five hours on foot, so the distance has to keep growing well past that before you take it onto a course. Get to it on flat, even ground first, because turf, slopes, wet grass and the lip of a bunker ask for balance as well as distance. Carry nothing: a trolley or a cart comes before a bag on your back, and if the walking is still the hard part, take the cart and keep taking it, because a cart is not a step backwards.
Then putting and chipping, where there is almost no turn. Low on turn is not the same as low on bending, though, and that is the trap in this rung: a green means bending down to the ball and reaching into the hole over and over, which is the movement a hip list limits rather than the turn. If you have been given hip precautions, that rung needs clearing for the bend as well as for the swing.
Then a slow half swing with a short club, with no ball. Then full swings without a ball, then with one. Hitting a ball adds something a practice swing cannot, because a fat shot into firm ground delivers a jolt the air swing never does, which is why the ball comes after the air swing rather than with it. Then nine holes riding or with a trolley, then nine on foot, then eighteen. The driver, which is the biggest turn you make, comes near the end rather than near the beginning.
Then judge each rung by the following morning rather than by how it felt at the time. A joint that is sore for an hour or so, settles, and is no worse when you get up the next day has handled the load. That is also how you know you are ready to go up: a rung has to pass that test twice before you take the next one, and then you change one thing, the club or the distance or the ball, rather than two.
If a rung leaves the joint worse the next morning, or more swollen, go back down to the rung below, stay there until it leaves nothing behind in the morning, and then try the harder one again. Dropping back is the normal way up and not a setback, and the first time it happens is the time to tell your physiotherapist, rather than the third: a rung you cannot pass twice is something they want to know, and they can change what the leg is doing between rounds instead of leaving you to keep testing it. If the joint swells or aches more after every session, or does not settle back to its usual size and comfort between sessions, stop that activity, go back to what the joint was handling before it started, and contact your physio or surgical team within the next few days rather than training through it, which is what the warning list below sets out for the knee.
One thing does not fit that rule, and it is the reason to say something the first time rather than wait for a pattern. An overdone round and an infection around the new joint arrive looking the same: more pain, more swelling, and nothing you can feel from the inside that tells the two apart. So if the joint is also hot or red, if the pain keeps building while you are resting and not only when you move, if you have a temperature or feel hot, cold or shivery, or if it has not settled within a day or two, do not just drop back a rung. Get medical advice the same day, as the warning list below explains, and a normal temperature is not an all clear.
Two situations change where you start on that ladder. If your other hip or knee is still waiting for the same operation, the leg that was done is not the only one deciding what you can walk and turn on, so say that when you ask about golf, because a round is four or five hours on both legs and the one that has not been done yet may well be the one that sets the limit. And if your operation was years ago rather than months, you are probably past the restrictions, although your team is still the one who says so. What will have changed meanwhile is your fitness for the walking, so the first rung starts from what you are doing now rather than from what you managed before the operation.
The groundwork sits elsewhere. The weekly range work for the hips, mid back and shoulders is on golf mobility, the ten minutes before you tee off is on the golf warm up, and the exercises and doses for the joint itself sit on the hip replacement program or the knee one, where they are staged and where your physiotherapist will adjust them. If your operation has not happened yet, prehab before joint replacement is where to start, and the pre-operative appointment is the moment to say out loud that you play golf.
When to stop and get advice
Going back to a course brings two of the problems after a joint replacement within reach on the same afternoon: the positions and turns that can take a hip toward coming out of its socket, and the fall on wet grass or a bunker edge that can break the bone around either joint. Both have clear signs, and both are better learned before you go out than afterward.
A third belongs here because returning to activity is where it gets mistaken for training. A calf that is newly swollen, warm or tender on one side, or a leg pain that does not feel like ordinary soreness, needs advice the same day rather than a week of stretching, and sudden breathlessness or chest pain is an emergency call even when the leg looks completely normal.
One more has nothing to do with the joint. Walking a course is four or five hours of steady effort, and for most people going back it is the longest stretch of exercise they have done since the operation. Chest pain, pressure or tightness that does not ease quickly when you rest is an emergency call rather than something to walk off, and the warning list below sets out what comes with it.
Read the warning list below properly once. The lines that matter most to a golfer going back start with the ones about a hip or knee that feels as though it has slipped out of place, including a clunk that settles and seems to come to nothing, and the one about a replaced knee that feels unstable or gives way, which is what a fast turn and a sloping fairway will find and which sits near the bottom of the list rather than in the emergency block. Read the fall lines next, because several of them apply even when you can still walk afterward. Then read every line about a blood clot: they cover the calf or thigh, sudden breathlessness or chest pain, and unusual bleeding if you are taking anything to lower your clot risk. Read the infection lines too, because a replaced joint can become infected years after the operation and a normal temperature is not an all clear. Then the line about a knee that swells or aches more after every session, which is written for the knee because the swelling figure inside it is a knee figure; a hip doing the same thing means the same thing, and "Going back by what the course asks" above says what to do about it the first time it happens. The full set for each joint is on hip replacement warning signs and knee replacement warning signs to call your surgeon about.
Nothing on this page is personal advice about your joint, and nothing here clears you for a round: that stays with your surgeon. The rest of the sport, including what golf asks of a body generally, is on the golf hub.
Related exercise programs
Warning signs
Get emergency help now
- Emergency: sudden severe pain in your hip or groin, sometimes with a clunk or pop, and you cannot move the leg or put weight on it, or the leg suddenly looks shorter or turned in or out. Do not try to walk on it or push it back into place. Keep still and call emergency services or go to an emergency department, and do not drive yourself. Your new hip may have come out of its socket (dislocated), and a medical team needs to put it back.
- Emergency: your operated leg looks shorter than it did, or its foot turns in or out more than before, or the hip moves in an unusual way, even if the pain is not severe. Keep your weight off it and go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. If you are in severe pain or cannot move the leg, call emergency services.
- Emergency: you have just fallen and cannot get up, or you think you may have hurt your head, neck, back or hip. Stay where you are, keep warm and call emergency services, or get someone to call for you. Nobody should try to lift you off the floor, and nobody should pull you up by the arms: being hauled upright can move a broken bone that has not slipped yet and can make an injured neck or back worse. Someone helping should call for help, keep you warm and stay with you. If you got up and walked without trouble and only notice pain later, without any of the emergency signs in this list, use the same-day lines in it instead.
- Emergency: you have had a fall or an injury and now have severe hip pain, or you cannot walk or put weight on the leg. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department. This can be a sign of a broken hip (hip fracture).
- Emergency: after a fall or a knock, you cannot put weight on the leg, your knee or thigh is very painful, or the leg looks out of shape or shorter than the other. Go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. If you cannot get up, call emergency services. A broken bone around a knee replacement is rare, but it needs treatment in hospital. If a smaller fall or knock leaves the knee newly painful, swollen or bruised, even if you can still walk on it and the leg looks normal, stop the exercises, go back to your crutches or sticks and keep your full weight off that leg, and get it checked by your surgical team the same day. Ask whether you need an X-ray: a break in the bone around a new knee is not always obvious at first, an X-ray is what shows it, and walking normally on one can move the broken ends apart.
- Emergency: your foot became weak or numb at the moment of a new injury to the operated leg, for example a fall, a twist, or the knee giving way or shifting out of place, so that your foot drags, catches on the ground or slaps down when you walk (foot drop), you cannot pull your foot or toes upward, or the top of your foot has lost feeling. Go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself: ask someone to drive you, or call emergency services if you cannot get up or the leg looks out of shape. This is a different situation from a foot that has been weak since your operation itself, which goes to your surgical team the same day, and it is not one to watch at home overnight to see whether it gets worse. A fall or a twist forceful enough to leave your foot weak from that moment can have injured the nerve that runs round the outer side of your knee, and the same force can injure the blood vessels behind the knee, so both have to be checked on the day and a hospital is the only place that can check them.
- Emergency: since your operation, you suddenly become short of breath, you get chest pain or pain in your upper back that may be worse when you breathe in, you cough up blood, your heart is beating very fast, or you faint. Call emergency services straight away, even if your leg looks normal. These can be signs of a blood clot in the lungs (pulmonary embolism).
- 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.
Get help today
- Same day: after a fall or a knock, even a small one, your hip, groin or thigh is newly painful, bruised or swollen, even if you can still walk and your leg looks normal. Stop the exercises, go back to your crutches or frame and keep your full weight off that leg, and contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. A break in the bone around a new hip is not always obvious at first, and walking normally on one can move the broken ends apart.
- 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: you are taking tablets or having injections to lower your risk of a blood clot and you notice blood in your urine, black or bloody stools, bleeding gums, a nosebleed that goes on and on, bruising far beyond what the knock would explain, or you are being sick or coughing up blood. Get medical advice the same day, and do not stop the medicine on your own. Bleeding more easily is the known trade-off of these medicines (NHS), and the dose or the type may need looking at. Go to an emergency department if the bleeding will not stop, you feel faint, or you bang your head while you are taking it, even if you feel fine, because the NHS advises getting urgent advice after a head injury on medicine that thins your blood and only a hospital can scan for a bleed inside the head.
- Same day: your wound becomes more red, hot, swollen or painful, starts to leak or ooze, is still leaking in the second week or has never stopped, has pus coming out of it or its edges start to come apart, or you have a high temperature or feel hot, cold or shivery. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. Redness can be harder to see on brown or black skin. If you feel very unwell, go to an emergency department. If you have a very high or very low temperature, shivering you cannot control, you are breathing very fast or finding it hard to breathe, you are confused or your speech is slurred, your skin, lips or tongue look blue, gray, pale or blotchy (on brown or black skin this can be easier to see on the palms of the hands or soles of the feet), or you have a rash that does not fade when you press it, call emergency services, as this can be sepsis.
- Same day: in the days or weeks after your operation you are getting more and more tired, breathless doing everyday things such as walking to the toilet or getting dressed, dizzy or lightheaded, your heart is racing, or your skin looks paler than usual. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. Tiredness and breathlessness that build up like this are not part of the usual recovery. Blood loss during and after a hip or knee replacement can leave you short of red blood cells (anemia), which is treatable, and a slow bleed or an infection can show up the same way. If breathlessness comes on suddenly, or you get chest pain, call emergency services, as the emergency line above explains.
- 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. Until it has been checked, use your walking aid, hold a rail on stairs and keep off uneven ground, because a foot that catches trips you and a fall onto a new hip or knee can damage it. If the weakness is getting worse by the hour, go to an emergency department.
- Same day: new numbness, tingling or burning in your operated leg or foot, beyond the numb patch of skin around your scar. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. If it started after a fall or an injury, or your foot or toes turn cold, pale, blue or gray, call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
- Same day: your hip clunks and feels as if it partly slipped out of place and went back, even if it settles straight away and your leg looks normal. Stop the exercises, avoid the movement that brought it on, go back to your crutches or frame, and keep away from deep bending, crossing your legs and twisting on that leg until you have been seen. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. If the leg then looks shorter or turned, or you cannot move it or put weight on it, call emergency services.
- Same day: you felt a pop, a snap or a sudden tearing pain over the side or the back of your hip, or your hip will not lift the leg out to the side any more, or it will not hold you up when you stand on that leg, so your hip drops or you lurch to one side. Stop the exercises, go back to your crutches or frame, and contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. Muscle and tendon are cut and stitched back during a hip replacement, and a repair that has given way needs assessing rather than exercising. If you cannot put weight on the leg at all, or the leg looks shorter or turned, call emergency services.
- Same day: you suddenly cannot straighten your knee or lift your leg straight when you could before, often after a pop, a tearing feeling or a stumble, or you notice a dip just above or below your kneecap, or you suddenly cannot put weight on the leg, even without a fall. Keep your weight off it and contact your surgical team the same day. If you cannot reach them that day, go to an emergency department. A tendon at the front of the knee may have torn, and a repair works better when it is done soon.
- Same day: since your operation, the pain, redness, warmth, tenderness or swelling in your hip or leg is not getting better or is getting worse, for example the hip pain keeps building both when you move and when you rest, or you have a new throbbing or cramping pain in your hip or leg. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day, as this can be a sign of infection around the new joint or a blood clot. If you feel very unwell, go to an emergency department.
- Same day: since your operation, the redness, warmth, swelling or pain in your knee is not getting better or is getting worse, for example the knee pain keeps building both when you move and when you rest. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day, as this can be a sign of infection around the new joint. If you feel very unwell, go to an emergency department.
- Same day: at any time after your operation, even years later, new pain in your new hip along with a high temperature or feeling hot, cold or shivery, or a hip that becomes hot, red or swollen, which counts on its own, with or without pain and with or without a temperature. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. A new joint can become infected long after the operation, and that needs treating quickly. A normal temperature is not an all clear: OrthoInfo says fever is no longer considered a sign of an infection after a joint replacement, that the signs can be as little as mild redness and swelling and sometimes there are none at all, and that increased pain or stiffness in a joint that had been working well is one of them. So do not wait for a temperature before you report new or increasing pain in your new hip to your surgical team.
- Same day: at any time after your operation, even years later, new pain in your new knee along with a high temperature or feeling hot, cold or shivery, or a knee that becomes hot, red or swollen, which counts on its own, with or without pain and with or without a temperature. Contact your surgical team or get medical advice the same day. A new joint can become infected long after the operation, and that needs treating quickly. A normal temperature is not an all clear: OrthoInfo says fever is no longer considered a sign of an infection after a joint replacement, that the signs can be as little as mild redness and swelling and sometimes there are none at all, and that increased pain or stiffness in a joint that had been working well is one of them. So do not wait for a temperature before you report new or increasing pain in your new knee to your surgical team.
- Same day: dizziness, lightheadedness, blurred vision or feeling faint when you stand up that is new for you, does not pass within a minute or two, keeps happening, or has made you fall. Sit or lie down, and get medical advice the same day. This can be a drop in blood pressure on standing (postural hypotension), a type of low blood pressure, which the NHS lists among the causes of falls, and your doctor can check it. Tell them about your medicines, because some can cause it. If it does not settle within a few minutes of sitting or lying still, call emergency services. If you faint, call emergency services, even if you come round quickly, because the NHS says to call them when someone faints while exercising or is badly hurt, and a faint onto a new hip can dislocate it or break the bone around it.
- Same day: dizziness or feeling faint during or after exercise, other than the brief lightheadedness as you stand up covered in the line above, without any of the emergency signs above. Stop the exercises 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.
Book an appointment
- Within a few days: your knee is not bending or straightening any further from week to week, is getting stiffer, or feels unstable or gives way when you stand or walk. This is not an emergency, but contact your physio or surgical team within the next few days rather than waiting for your next routine appointment, and keep using your walking aid until they have checked it. A stiff knee is easier to free up early than late: where it has to be freed up under anesthetic, doing that earlier, generally within about 6 to 12 weeks of the operation, is associated with regaining more movement than doing it later, although how much any one knee gains also depends on how stiff it was to begin with, on who is suitable and on the rehabilitation afterward. So the date you raise it matters (Hosanee and colleagues, 2026). If the knee has given way and let you fall, or it gives way on stairs, hold a rail and use your walking aid every time, and stay off stairs on your own until you have been seen.
- Within a few days: now that you are back to a sport, your knee swells or aches more after every session, or does not settle back to its usual size and comfort between sessions. Stop that activity, go back to the amount the knee was handling before it started, and contact your physio or surgical team within the next few days rather than training through it. Some swelling is expected for months after this operation, and OrthoInfo describes mild to moderate swelling for about 3 to 6 months, which is exactly what makes a new pattern easy to explain away. OrthoInfo asks you to tell your doctor about new or severe swelling because it can be the warning sign of a blood clot, and a new knee that swells every time it is loaded can also mean the activity is asking more of the joint than it is tolerating. Get medical advice the same day instead if the knee becomes hot or red, or you have a high temperature or feel hot, cold or shivery.
- Within a few days: you have had a fall, even if you were not hurt, or you keep tripping, stumbling or feeling that your legs might give way. Book an appointment with your doctor within a few days and ask about a falls assessment. Tell them about every fall, even the ones where you were not hurt.
- Routine: pain in your new hip that had settled and has come back, or pain that is getting worse month by month, for example in the groin or thigh when you first stand up and start to walk. This is not an emergency, but ask your surgical team for a review, as the parts of a new joint can loosen or wear over the years. Get medical advice the same day instead, not a routine appointment, if the hip also becomes hot, red or swollen, or you have a high temperature or feel hot, cold or shivery, or the pain is building week by week rather than month by month. A new joint can become infected years after the operation, and the two can feel similar at first.
- Routine: pain in your new knee that had settled and has come back, or pain that is getting worse month by month, for example pain that starts as soon as you stand up and begin to walk. This is not an emergency, but ask your surgical team for a review, as the parts of a new joint can loosen or wear over the years. Get medical advice the same day instead, not a routine appointment, if the knee also becomes hot, red or swollen, or you have a high temperature or feel hot, cold or shivery, or the pain is building week by week rather than month by month. A new joint can become infected years after the operation, and the two can feel similar at first.
Common questions
Can you play golf after a hip replacement?
Most golfers do, and the hip is the joint with the firmest figure behind it. A meta-analysis of 23 retrospective studies pooled return to golf at 90 percent after hip replacement, with a confidence interval of 82 to 98 from 4 studies, which is the tightest estimate in the paper (Robinson and colleagues, 2023). Golf also sits on the gentler side of the activity lists: OrthoInfo, from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, names golfing among the lower impact activities it describes as preferable to high-impact ones such as jogging and singles tennis. None of that is permission for your hip. Every study in that review was retrospective, with a mean patient age of 66.8 years, and the person who knows how your hip was reached and how stable it felt on the table is your surgeon.
When can you play golf after a hip replacement?
There is no published date, and that is a finding rather than an omission. We checked the national patient pages in November 2026: the NHS pages on recovering from a hip replacement and from a knee replacement mentioned golf zero times, healthdirect's hip replacement page mentioned it zero times, Healthify's mentioned it zero times, and OrthoInfo's page on activities after a hip replacement mentioned golf exactly once, in a list, with no timing attached. The clearest timing figure anybody has is a survey of 120 members of the European Knee Associates, which placed golf among the sports recommended beyond 12 weeks after a total knee replacement and recorded its own level of evidence as the lowest grade, expert opinion (Thaler and colleagues, 2021). That is a vote by surgeons, about knees, and the paper says so itself. An older survey of The Knee Society, reported in 1993, recommended waiting approximately 18 weeks before beginning to play (Mallon and Callaghan, 1993), so even the votes are six weeks apart. The timing advice in circulation is surgeon opinion, and your own surgeon's version of it is the one that applies to you.
Is the knee or the hip the bigger problem for golf?
On the published figures, the knee is the less predictable of the two. The same meta-analysis pooled 70 percent return to golf after knee replacement from 6 studies, with a confidence interval running from 39 to 100 percent, against 90 percent from 82 to 98 for the hip (Robinson and colleagues, 2023). An interval that wide is not a number you can plan around; it means the studies disagreed almost completely. Figures elsewhere disagree too: a 2026 literature review states that hip replacement, hip arthroscopy, knee replacement, ankle replacement and shoulder replacement all have return-to-play rates above 85 percent (Cohn and colleagues, 2026), while a survey of golfers after knee replacement found 44 of 54 back on a course, which is 81.5 percent (Tramer and colleagues, 2022). Three figures, three surgical journals, four years. Sports after a knee replacement deals with the knee in full.
Do I have to change my golf swing?
Nobody can tell you that any particular swing change is safer for a replaced joint, because it has not been studied. What is in national guidance is more specific and more useful. The NHS rules out three things while the hip is recovering, jumping, sudden turns and a high risk of a fall, and tells you not to bend your hip more than 90 degrees, which is a right angle, or to bend down to touch your feet or ankles; for the knee it says to avoid twisting your knee, bending down and reaching up as much as possible (NHS, 2024; NHS, 2026). A golf swing is a turn, a twist and, at the tee and at the hole, a bend. Those instructions apply while you are recovering and your team decides when that period ends, so the practical move is to take the follow through, the bend to the tee and the reach into the hole to your surgeon as three separate questions rather than asking about golf in general.
Can I walk a round again after a hip replacement?
This is the part most people are actually asking about, and it is the biggest single thing a round asks of a new joint: 18 holes on foot is four or five hours, usually on slopes, and for most people going back it is the longest stretch of exercise since the operation. That makes it something you train for rather than something you attempt. Build the walking off the course first, flat and even ground before turf and slopes, and keep the distance growing: the walking the hip replacement program builds toward is 20 to 30 minutes at a time, which is a long way short of a round. Ride or push a trolley for the first rounds, play nine holes before you play 18, and leave carrying a bag until last or leave it out altogether. If the joint is more swollen or more sore the next morning, the distance was too far, so go back to what it was handling and tell your physiotherapist the first time it happens rather than the third.
Does it matter which leg they operated on?
It almost certainly does, and the little evidence there is points one way. The lead leg, the one nearer the target, takes the weight and the rotation through the downswing, so a replaced lead knee or hip is in a different situation from a replaced trail one. In a 1993 survey of 83 active golfers after a knee replacement, the ones whose left knee had been replaced reported significantly more pain during and after play than the ones whose right knee had been replaced (Mallon and Callaghan, 1993); that study recorded the side rather than the golfer's handedness, but for a right-handed golfer the left knee is the lead one. A prospective study of 10 recreational golfers after knee replacement recorded that half of them had been operated on the lead leg, which is the first time anyone reported it as a lead and trail split (Ledford and colleagues, 2026). Ten patients is ten, nobody has applied the distinction to the hip at all, and a trail leg is doing a different job rather than no job. Tell your surgeon and your physiotherapist which hand you play with and which leg was done, because they will not assume it, and a left-handed golfer with a replaced left hip has a trail hip rather than a lead one.
Will my handicap change?
On average, hardly at all. The meta-analysis reported a mean handicap change of about zero across 8 studies, with a confidence interval spanning roughly 2 strokes in either direction (Robinson and colleagues, 2023). A survey of 54 golfers after knee replacement found no significant change in handicap or driving distance, with 84.1 percent saying their performance had improved or stayed the same, and pain during golf falling from a mean of 6.4 to 1.8 on a 10 point scale (Tramer and colleagues, 2022). A prospective group of 10 found no change in handicap either (Ledford and colleagues, 2026). The older series disagree: 83 active golfers surveyed in 1993 reported handicaps rising by a mean of 4.6 strokes and shorter drives (Mallon and Callaghan, 1993). What those averages hide is the spread, and distance is the thing golfers most often say they have lost, so treat a stable handicap as the typical outcome rather than the guaranteed one.
How long after a knee replacement can you play golf?
The averages exist and they describe people who went back, not a schedule anyone set for them. Across 9 studies covering hip, knee and shoulder replacements together, the mean time to returning to golf was 4.4 months with a confidence interval of 3.2 to 6, and that figure was not broken down by joint (Robinson and colleagues, 2023). Among 54 golfers after a knee replacement, the mean was 5.3 months with a standard deviation of 3.1 (Tramer and colleagues, 2022). A prospective group of 10 recreational golfers had played a mean of 8 full rounds by 3 months and 44 by 12 months (Ledford and colleagues, 2026). Your own team's date comes before all three, and what they are judging is what your leg can do rather than which week it is.
References
- Robinson PG, Williamson TR, Creighton AP, Cheng J, Murray AD, Prather H, Dines JS, Gulotta LV, Su EP, Press JM, Hawkes R, Clement ND. Rate and timing of return to golf after hip, knee, or shoulder arthroplasty: a systematic review and meta-analysis. American Journal of Sports Medicine. 2023;51(6):1644-1651. https://doi.org/10.1177/03635465211064292
- Tramer JS, Maier LM, Klag EA, Ayoola AS, et al. Return to play and performance in golfers after total knee arthroplasty: does component type matter? Sports Health. 2022;14(3):433-439. https://doi.org/10.1177/19417381211019348
- Ledford CK, Pelkowski JN, Dohse NM, Cochrane NH, Springer BD, Spencer-Gardner LS. Golf after total knee arthroplasty: prospective analysis of performance and return to play. Journal of Knee Surgery. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1055/a-2949-2572
- Thaler M, Khosravi I, Putzer D, Hirschmann MT, Kort N, Tandogan RN, Liebensteiner M. Twenty-one sports activities are recommended by the European Knee Associates (EKA) six months after total knee arthroplasty. Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy. 2021;29(3):694-709. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00167-020-06400-y
- Cohn RM, Stapleton EJ, Pirtle JM, Bitterman AD. Return to golf after elective orthopaedic surgery: a literature review. Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. 2026;34(1):e11-e19. https://doi.org/10.5435/JAAOS-D-25-00413
- Mallon WJ, Callaghan JJ. Total knee arthroplasty in active golfers. Journal of Arthroplasty. 1993;8(3):299-306. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0883-5403(06)80093-8
- Hosanee S, Elebo N, Sikhauli N, Pietrzak JRT. Reluctant knee: understanding and managing stiffness after total knee arthroplasty. International Orthopaedics. 2026;50(9):2337-2346. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00264-026-06905-0
- Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Orthopaedic surgery and anaemia. Published 5 March 2024. https://roh.nhs.uk/news-events/orthopaedic-surgery-and-anaemia
- NHS. Iron deficiency anaemia. Page last reviewed 26 January 2024. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/iron-deficiency-anaemia/
- 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
- NHS. Recovering from a hip replacement. Page last reviewed 6 March 2024. https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/hip-replacement/recovering-from-a-hip-replacement/
- NHS. Recovering from a knee replacement. Page last reviewed 9 September 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/knee-replacement/recovery/
- American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Activities after a hip replacement. OrthoInfo. https://www.orthoinfo.org/en/recovery/activities-after-hip-replacement/
- American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Total knee replacement exercise guide. OrthoInfo. https://www.orthoinfo.org/en/recovery/total-knee-replacement-exercise-guide/
- American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Infection after joint replacement. OrthoInfo. https://www.orthoinfo.org/en/diseases--conditions/joint-replacement-infection/
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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.