Golfers told: prevent injury — and improve swing

MEDICS are now shouting ‘fore!’ to golfers, urging them to protect their arms and shoulders before they suffer any injuries.

They are stressing that physiotherapy and assessment before an injury occurs can not only prevent harm, but can help golfers improve their swing and play a better game.

Today, just days before the Ryder Cup gets under way, more than 100 medical experts will attend a major meeting on sports and exercise at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in Dublin.

Some of the practitioners attending the meeting are working with some of the world’s elite athletes, as well as sports organisations such as the GAA, IRFU and FAI.

Conference chairman Dr Pat O’Neill said golf was the most commonly played sport among men in Ireland, with 17% playing golf, compared to just 5% of women.

And, he said, the link between sports and medicine was becoming increasingly high profile and better understood. Up to now, the focus has been on injury when, in fact, prevention was even more important.

Dr O’Neill said there was an enormous number of people engaged in golf. With as many as 350,000 members in 408 golf clubs, it is the second largest membership sport in Ireland.

And, he said, although not associated with catastrophic injuries, golf was an important sector for medical consideration.

“It is particularly timely that we turn our attention to these matters just days before the Ryder Cup — possibly the most exciting international sports event ever to take place in Ireland — and on the weekend of the biggest sporting event on the national calendar, the GAA football final.”

And, he stressed, sport and exercise was also the key to solving major public health issues such as obesity and even cardiac disease.

The Annual Scientific meeting of the Irish Faculty of Sports and Exercise Medicine will include lectures from specialists in upper limb nerves and tremors; diagnostic imaging; shoulder and hand injuries; physiotherapy and a series of 10 sports case studies.

The Faculty of Sports and Exercise Medicine was set up jointly by the RCSI and Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in 2002.