Golf Carts Are Parked, Walking Is In and, Yes, It’s Exercise

If that remains true, it will bring new light to recent studies that have championed golf’s health benefits. In 2018, a consortium of public health experts, with help from several governing bodies including the World Golf Foundation, researched 342 previously published studies on the sport and linked playing golf with better strength and balance and a lower risk of heart disease. A 2008 Swedish study of 300,000 golfers found the death rate for golfers to be 40 percent lower than for other people of the same sex, age and socioeconomic status, which translated to a five-year increase in life expectancy. Golfers with lower handicaps were the healthiest, perhaps because they played more.

But the most fascinating and enduring study of golf’s creditability as worthy, moderate exercise was conducted 13 years ago by Neil Wolkodoff, the director of the Colorado Center for Health and Sport Science. At a cost of $30,000, Wolkodoff strapped portable metabolic measuring systems to amateur golfers to count calories burned while playing nine holes in a variety of ways: walking and carrying clubs, walking with a pushed or pulled cart that transported their clubs, walking with a caddie and riding in a cart.

It was not a surprise that golfers walking and carrying their bags across the typically undulating topography of a golf course expended the most energy and, on average, burned 721 calories. Walking with a pushcart produced roughly the same caloric output and being accompanied by a caddie burned 621 calories. Even riding a cart while playing nine holes burned 411 calories on average. Just swinging a golf club 100 times, which the average golfer would likely do with practice swings, uses up a significant amount of energy.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/sports/golf/golf-walking-vs-carts-exercise.html