Here in the Philadelphia area, we are rapidly approaching spring and summer. With those seasons comes more time spent outdoors, and for some of us, playing golf is one of the activities that we enjoy this time of year.
As anyone who has met him knows, golf and audiology are two of the things that our Dr. Goyne spends a lot of time thinking about, and below are several reasons why better hearing and balance can set you up for better golf.
While walking all by yourself with your bag over your shoulder as the sun sets is a great experience, golf typically includes a social component. During the round, in between shots, there’s chatting with your playing partners about the course, your swings, the weather, etc. After the round, it is common to have a beverage (or two) with friends and commiserate about the strokes that got away and plan the next golf outing.
However, if you do not understand speech as well as you should, you might miss out on the social aspects of golf, which in turn makes the sport potentially less enjoyable. Better hearing will allow you to be fully involved in the conversations during and after the round, rather than possibly nodding your head and pretending to hear what was said. Yes, playing golf alone can be fun, but playing golf with friends and enjoying the full experience is even better.
Outside of the social aspects, better hearing may also have a positive effect on your ability to get the ball into the hole in fewer strokes. Better hearing has a subtle but significant correlation with better balance, which will in turn improve your swing. As all golfers know, making contact that is even just slightly off the sweet spot can result in wasted strokes, and so being in complete control of your balance, even on a subconscious level can be important for your swing. [More on how an audiologist can help with balance issues is below.]
In addition, better hearing allows you to hear the contact you make more clearly, which has an effect on your ability to judge the quality of the contact you are making with the ball. The great Arnold Palmer used hearing aids for decades, and he had this to say about the effect they had on his golf game: “I’ve noticed the sound of the golf ball being hit by the golf club is different, and much more realistic, with the hearing aids. The sound with the hearing aids makes sense, and better represents what I know is happening to the golf ball. So you could say that the hearing aids help give me confidence regarding my golf game.” He went on to say, “When I walked out on the golf course the first day I had hearing aids, I heard things that I hadn’t heard on the golf course in a long time, like the click of hitting a putt or hitting a golf ball, or the club going through the air when I took practice swings. It made a tremendous difference.”
Certainly, improving one’s hearing isn’t likely to take them from struggling to break 100 over 18 holes to a scratch handicap, but in a game where every little bit helps and given that socializing is part of the fun, optimizing one’s hearing seems like time well-spent.
While audiologists are quite naturally associated with helping people hear and understand speech better, it sometimes flies under the radar that we are also well-trained and experienced in assessing a person’s balance, diagnosing the cause of any balance deficits that are discovered, and then either treating the issue or making the appropriate referral for treatment.
And so with that in mind, if someone gets a little dizzy or lightheaded when pulling the ball out of the hole, or teeing up the ball in the tee box, or if they have difficulty focusing on the ball, or, if no matter how hard they try, they find it difficult to maintain a well-balanced swing, it may be that something is amiss in the vestibular system that is worth investigating and addressing. Similar to hearing, a well-functioning balance system will certainly allow you to enjoy the game more and maybe even play a little better.