Golfer’s Back: Why Your Swing Could Be the Problem
Late summer is peak season on Ottawa’s courses — tee times at Loch March, Eagle Creek, and The Marshes are booked solid, weeknight leagues are in full swing, and everyone’s trying to squeeze in a few more rounds before the weather turns. It’s also the point in the season when our clinic starts hearing the same complaint, over and over: a tight, achy low back that shows up somewhere around the back nine, or the next morning, and doesn’t seem to want to leave.
The instinct is to blame the game itself — or just chalk it up to getting older. But in the clinic, that’s rarely the real story. The golf swing is one of the fastest rotational movements in sport, and when the body can’t rotate well somewhere else, the low back ends up doing work it was never built to do, swing after swing, round after round.
Here’s what’s actually happening in a golf swing, why it tends to catch up with people exactly this time of year, and what helps — beyond just “swinging easier.”