arbitrary constant

That's the headline on this article, which goes on to say that players who use a particular driver should consider wearing ear plugs, because the club creates a sonic boom which might damage hearing.

I'm a bit of a golfer (see picture; by 'bit', I mean 'crap') and can't help but feel that the doctors have missed the point. Losing your hearing because you hit the ball too hard and too far with a nice, shiny metal golf club wouldn't be an arduous thing — most golfers I know (actually, they're mainly people who play golf; there is a difference) would welcome it: so long as the ball flies straight and long, they'll take being hard of hearing.

The truth, though, is that most people who play golf / golfers would spend so much time getting stressed that they can't hit the ball straight and long — a not unknown occurence, and one that often results in high blood pressure — that a heart attack will probably kill them long before they hit a ball hard enough to go deaf.

One of the experts talking about the sonic boom problem considered the possibility that:

players use the noise as feedback to assess how they are playing and how well their equipment is performing [meaning earplugs] "might not work for all."

Actually, he's right: I often have to listen to the sound of the 'duff' my club makes in the rough, approximately 12 inches away from where I meant to hit, to assess just how bad a shot I've hit...

Filed in General Interest, Personal, Sport