Golf provides ‘significant health benefits’ to older players, new study reveals

on-golfers might respond with eye-rolls to any suggestion that the game of golf provides participants with quality exercise, especially compared to other sports. But according to a new research study supported by the R&A, golf is not only a good form of exercise, it can significantly improve quality of life for older golfers in a host of different ways.

Over the course of two years, duel research teams at the University of Southampton in England and the University of Southern California studied the effects of playing golf on older participants. The result is the “The Strength and Balance Study,” which concluded that golf provides numerous “strength and balance benefits” to older golfers.

The two research groups went about things slightly differently. Researchers at Southampton studied 152 people 65 and older to “demonstrate the physical and psychosocial benefits associated with playing recreational golf regularly by comparing physical measures between older golfers and sedentary non-golfers.”

Scientists at USC, on the other hand, tracked 15 individuals to find “if non-golfers developed these benefits while undertaking a 10-week instructional golf training programme.”

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