Golf can make you deaf, according to an article in the British Medical Journal. My first thought when I heard this, courtesy of a hilarious article in Scientific American by Steve Mirsky, was that it must be the screams of frustration. Actually no, it’s the 112 decibel BANG! produced by a certain titanium driver 1.7 meters from the golfer’s ear.

The patient in the BMJ case study suffered 20 dB of hearing loss at frequencies between 3-6 kHz. He described the sound of his King Cobra LD driver hitting the ball as being like “a gun going off.” An Internet search found a number of other comments about the sound of this driver, such as, “This is not so much a ting but a sonic boom which resonates across the course!”

You’ve got to hand it to the manufacturers of these new drivers. They’ve found a completely new way (after water, bunker, sand, frustration, and boredom) to spoil a good walk.

—Bob Finn

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Posted in Conditions, sports medicine, weird medical conditions