Killer Backswing Could Kill Your Hearing

Golf isn't the most extreme athletic endeavor; they don't ask you whether you hit the links when you are filling out life insurance applications, for example. It's a pretty safe sport, so long as you don't break your arm in a cart accident, tear up your knee with overexertion or get bopped on the head by an errant tee shot.

But the amateur game is getting a bit more dangerous in a way you wouldn't expect. The BBC (via Gizmodo) reports on a study that attributes potential hearing loss with repeated subjection to the loud thwack of a tee shot with newer thin-faced drivers.

Ear specialists suspect the "sonic boom" the metal club head makes when it strikes the ball damaged the hearing of a 55-year-old golfer they treated. [...] The man had been playing with a King Cobra LD titanium club three times a week for 18 months and commented that the noise of the club hitting the ball was "like a gun going off". It had become so unpleasant that he decided to ditch the club, but by this time he had already suffered some hearing loss.

While there's no chance most bums (myself included) hit the ball hard enough to register more than a tinny "tink," I wonder if PGA competitors use earplugs in training. It'd make sense during tournaments anyways, but these golfers are hitting the ball far more frequently and (I assume) harder than the British deaf dude. It'd be terrible if in a decade we faced a growing deaf golfer epidemic, akin to the legion of concussed former QBs and limping NBA giants.

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