Golf

Is golf safe?

Yes. Golf is one of the gentlest sports we rate, and the main danger on a course is not the ball, the club or the weather but the golfer's own heart. The average player is older than in most sports, and walking 18 holes with bursts of effort is enough to trigger a cardiac arrest in someone with heart disease.

No agency counts golf deaths directly, so we built an estimate. A 2026 study in JACEP Open found 476 cardiac arrests on US golf courses in 2020–2023 in areas covered by the CARES registry, which covers 56% of the US population. Scaled up, that is about 210 arrests a year. About 70% were fatal. Set against more than 500 million rounds a year, that gives about 0.3 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per round (our estimate). It probably overstates the risk a little, because the authors could not confirm that every arrest happened during play.

Lightning, golf carts and flying balls together add only a fraction of that.

What happens when a golfer collapses

The registry study gives a clear profile: 91% of patients were men, with an average age of 65, and most had a shockable heart rhythm when help arrived. That is the type of arrest a defibrillator (AED) can reverse.

Survival to hospital discharge was 30.5%, about three times the US average for cardiac arrests outside hospital, because golfers usually play in groups and someone sees the collapse. When an AED was applied, survival rose from 18.7% to 37.9%. For witnessed arrests with a shockable rhythm and an AED, it was 63.8%.

The weak point is distance. A golfer can collapse a kilometre from the clubhouse, and many courses have no AED, or one locked in the pro shop. Several US states require defibrillators in indoor sports venues, but the rules often do not cover outdoor courses.

Lightning: real, but smaller than the myth

Golfers have a reputation as lightning victims. The data say otherwise. The US National Weather Service analysed all 418 lightning deaths in 2006–2019: 10 were golfers. Fishing accounted for 40, beach activities 25 and camping 20. Among sports, soccer had more deaths than golf.

Spread over hundreds of millions of rounds, the lightning risk per round is a tiny fraction of a micromortMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary. The NWS point applies to golf as much as to fishing: the people killed are usually those who were still outside when the storm arrived, so the decision to stop early is what keeps the number low.

Golf carts cause more injuries than clubs

The most surprising number in the injury data is how many golf injuries involve the cart. In a NEISS study of golf leg injuries treated in US emergency departments in 2013–2022, carts were the mechanism in 40% of cases, ahead of falls and overuse, and cart injuries grew each year.

Carts have no doors, a high centre of gravity and often no seat belts. People fall out on turns, carts roll over on slopes, and children ride on laps or stand at the back. US emergency departments treated about 156,000 golf cart injuries in 2007–2017. That count includes carts used on streets and in retirement communities, not just on courses, and children had the highest rate of traumatic brain injury. A trauma centre review of golf-related neurological injuries found cart crashes produced the most severe injuries, and the one death in that series was a cart crash.

Clubs and balls

Children are most at risk here. Over ten years, NEISS recorded golf-related facial and skull fractures equal to about 3,850 emergency visits, and under-18s made up 55% of cases despite being about a tenth of players. Clubs caused 63% of the fractures, balls 24% and falls 11%, so the classic case is a child standing too close to someone taking a swing.

Among the 70,900 golf arm and hand injuries seen in US emergency departments in 2011–2020, carts (45%) and falls (29%) caused far more than the swing itself (10%). Back, elbow and wrist strain from swinging is common, but it is rarely a hospital case.

How to play golf more safely

1. Know where the AED is before you tee off, and learn CPR. Survival on a course depends on what the group does in the first minutes.
2. Leave at the first thunder. Do not wait for the siren. Shelter in the clubhouse or a closed car, never under a tree, and wait 30 minutes after the last thunder before going back out.
3. Drive carts slowly, especially downhill and on turns. Keep feet inside, sit down and do not let children ride on laps or the back.
4. Keep children well back from anyone swinging, and teach them never to walk behind a player.
5. Shout "fore" and listen for it. Watch the group ahead before you hit.
6. Talk to your doctor if you have chest pain or breathlessness on the course.

How we scored it

Fatality risk (90) reflects about 0.3 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per round, almost all from cardiac arrest. Injury risk (85) is low, with carts the biggest single cause. Controllability (80) gives credit for storm and cart decisions, and rescue (85) loses points because help can be far away on a large course. Compare tennis, a more strenuous sport with a similar heart risk, and walking.