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Golf is an amazingly safe sport. Even though injuries on the golf course are far and few between, the most common golf injury reported to the emergency rooms across the country is from the ball or the club hitting the face or head. This finding led to a study by Janda reported in Golf Digest magazine in which a golf ball machine was used to propel a ball hitting a crash dummy in the head, chest and arm. Computer equipment recorded the impact data from the dummy’s load cells to determine the extent of the golf injury. Janda found that most of the simulated injuries could be serious or fatal unless treated properly and quickly. Janda’s study showed what researchers of head injuries in other sports have found–if a hard object traveling fast hits a human in the head, it causes a serious injury.
Even though being hit in the head with a golf ball can cause serious injury or even death, golf injury statistics show that golf is an amazingly safe sport. Golfers sometimes have back problems or occasionally someone has a heart attack on the golf course, but these are fitness related injuries, or maybe it is more appropriate to say they are lack-of-fitness related injuries. Golfers encounter a serious injury only very rarely. In fact, serious golf injuries are so rare that they
To find out just how safe golf is, pediatric neurosurgeons at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta studied their records of patients admittedbetween 1996 and 2002. Remember that these are neurosurgeons. This is not a local hospital emergency room that sees everything from bumps and bruises to gunshot wounds. Neurosurgeons focus on head injuries, which certainly qualify as serious. So keep in mind that this study is of serious head injuries only. This six year review of 2,546 patients under age 19 revealed 64 sports-related injuries, 15 of which were golf-related. Seven of the golf injuries were caused by golf cart accidents, seven by golf clubs and one by a golf ball, A report by Dr. Scott Y. Rahimi, neurosurgery resident and lead author on the study published in the March issue of Journal of Neurosurgery states that Seventeen bicycle-related head injuries during that period barely beat out golf as the major cause of sports-related head injuries in these children.
Before you get too concerned though, take a look at these numbers. The review included 2,546 patients over a 6 year period. Only 15 of the injuries were golf related. Now look at the causes of the injuries. Seven of the golf injuries were caused by golf cart accidents, seven by golf clubs and one by a golf ball. The seven golf cart accidents are actually automotive and not directly related to the sport of golf, so they really have no relevance as to whether golf is safe or not. Considering only the other 8 instances of injury by club or ball: looking at the total number of patients (we assume they were all seriously injured) only 1 in every 318 seriously injured people is seriously injured on a golf course by a club or a ball, and the study reported 1 child died. That’s 1 in every 2546 already seriously injured people.
On the other hand, consider lightening fatalities and injuries. The government statisticians tell us that based on the NOAA publication Storm Datathat over the last 36 years, there have been an average of 90 lightening deaths and 300 injuries from lightning in the US annually. In 2002 there were There were 97,900 accidental deaths in the US. Lighting is the most stable of all the weather related accident statistics, so assuming 90 deaths by lightning in 2002. So out of all the people who died accidentally in 2002, only 1 in every 1087 people died from lightening strike. Comparing the potential for death by lightning to death by golf related injury, you have twice as much chance as dying from lightning strike than from a golf injury on a golf course.
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