Change of direction & resilience
How Many Hours a Week Is Too Much?
Most golf parents ask whether their junior is practicing enough.
Almost nobody asks the other question.
The number
Researchers studying overuse injuries in young athletes found a rule of thumb you can carry without a spreadsheet.
Athletes training more hours per week than their age in years had higher odds of a serious overuse injury.
A thirteen-year-old training sixteen hours a week is asking a thirteen-year-old body to absorb more than it is built for. A sixteen-year-old at sixteen hours is nearer the line.
It is not a law. It is a flag.
Why it holds up
Overuse injuries are not bad luck. They are load arriving faster than tissue adapts.
The same body of work describes the highest-risk profile: one sport, year-round training beyond eight months, and little unstructured play. Specialisation tracks with the injuries — and with worse sleep and higher in-season fatigue.
Golf families feel this at the end of tournament summer. The junior who was sharp in June is flat, sore and short-tempered by August. Nothing dramatic happened. The hours just kept arriving.
What to count
Everything, not just club training.
Range sessions. Rounds — a 36-hole tournament day counts double. Lessons. Short-game hours. Fitness work. The extra bucket because the driver felt close.
Families reliably undercount, because each item looks small alone.
What to do with this
Add up one honest week — this week, not a typical one.
Compare it with her age. If it is well over, you have found something worth a conversation, and you found it before a stress injury did.
Then check the other ratio: organised training versus free play. More than two to one is a second flag.
The framework worth keeping
Hours should not outrun years. When they do, something gives — usually the player, usually at the worst point in the season.
This article supports our deeper guide: Change of direction & resilience.
Ask about your athleteQuestions parents ask
Does this mean competitive junior golf is bad for my player?
No. The course and the range are where golfers get better. The finding is about total load across everything, and whether recovery keeps pace — and golf hours are deceptively easy to stack because nothing about them feels hard on the day.
She plays another sport too. Does that make it worse?
The hours still count, but playing more than one sport is protective in the research, not harmful. The highest-risk profile is one sport, year-round, for more hours than the athlete's age.
What about casual rounds with friends?
Unstructured play is the one thing the research treats kindly. When organised training runs more than twice the free-play time, that ratio is itself a flag.
Where this comes from
The claims above are not our opinion. Here is where they come from.