At some point, many golfers notice the same thing.
The iron that used to comfortably reach a green suddenly comes up short. You start taking one more club, then perhaps two. A drive that once carried beyond 220 yards now lands considerably earlier. And there is an obvious explanation waiting for us:
I’m getting older.
Several years ago, MyGolfMedia looked at this question through research and commentary published by Mike Carroll for the Titleist Performance Institute. The argument was an encouraging one: ageing itself was not necessarily the only reason golfers became slower. The gradual loss of strength, power and neuromuscular capacity also mattered — and unlike chronological age, some of those physical qualities could potentially be trained.
In 2026, that central idea has aged rather well.
But the evidence now allows us to be considerably more precise.
Yes, ageing produces genuine physiological changes that can affect the ability to generate speed. No, strength training cannot magically give a 70-year-old the physical capacities they had at 25. But between those two statements lies an important area that golfers can influence.
A new systematic review and meta-analysis published in 2026 provides particularly interesting evidence. Researchers examined 33 studies involving 798 participants. In the controlled studies, physical training produced average improvements of 1.05 m/s in clubhead speed — approximately 2.35 mph — 2.20 m/s in ball speed, 9.33 metres (10.2 yards) in carry distance and 10.55 metres (11.5 yards) in total distance. The authors nevertheless rated the certainty of the controlled evidence as low, an important qualification when interpreting those numbers.
Ten extra yards will not turn a 70-year-old golfer into Rory McIlroy.
But for a player who has gradually lost distance, ten yards can change the club required into greens throughout an entire round.
So perhaps we should ask a more useful question.
What actually causes clubhead speed to decline as we get older — and how much of that decline can we still influence?
It isn’t only your golf swing that ages
Talking about an age-related loss of speed can make the process sound remarkably simple, as though every birthday automatically removes another fraction of a mile per hour from your driver.
Human physiology does not work quite like that.
Ageing is associated with progressive changes in muscle mass, strength and the ability to produce force rapidly. Neuromuscular function changes too. For golfers, the distinction between strength and power becomes particularly important.
Put simply, strength is the ability to produce force.
Power introduces another essential variable: time.
For golf, it is not enough to be capable of producing a large amount of force. The golfer needs to produce and transfer force very quickly.
A driver swing happens in a remarkably short period of time.
That helps explain why someone can remain perfectly capable in everyday life — walking, carrying shopping or climbing stairs — while nevertheless noticing that their driver no longer moves as quickly as it once did.
The issue is therefore not simply how much muscle a golfer has.
It is also how effectively the entire system can produce force quickly enough to contribute to an explosive sporting movement.
And that distinction considerably changes the way we should think about ageing golfers.
What if flexibility isn’t the main culprit?
Ask an older golfer why they no longer hit the ball as far and one explanation comes up remarkably often.
I’m not as flexible as I used to be.
Perhaps they cannot make the same shoulder turn. Their backs feel stiffer. Their backswing has become shorter.
Mobility certainly matters to the way an individual golfer organises a swing. A physical restriction may require a technical adaptation, and particular movements obviously require adequate ranges of motion.
But that does not mean flexibility is the physical characteristic most strongly associated with clubhead speed.
A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis published in Sports Medicine examined 20 studies investigating relationships between physical characteristics and driver clubhead speed.
Significant associations were found for lower-body strength, upper-body strength, several measures of jumping performance, upper-body explosive strength and other physical characteristics.
Flexibility was not significantly associated with clubhead speed in the pooled analysis.
That does not mean golfers should stop working on mobility.
Nor does it prove that flexibility has no effect on an individual golfer’s swing. The result tells us something more specific: across the studies analysed, flexibility measurements did not show the relationship with clubhead speed that measures of strength and explosive ability did.
An earlier systematic review had reached a broadly similar conclusion. Clubhead speed showed its strongest correlations with upper-body power/explosiveness (r = 0.51), lower-body strength (r = 0.46), upper-body strength (r = 0.41) and lower-body power/explosiveness (r = 0.38). Tests including squat strength, estimated jump power and medicine-ball throwing also showed relatively large pooled correlations with clubhead speed.
There is an important scientific distinction here: correlation does not prove causation.
Throwing a medicine ball will not automatically make you a faster driver of the golf ball.
But these results challenge one of golf’s more persistent assumptions. If you are losing clubhead speed as you get older, concentrating exclusively on becoming more flexible may address only part of the problem.
Your ability to produce force — and particularly to produce it quickly — deserves attention too.
Does the body still respond to training after 60 or 70?
This was at the heart of our original article, and it remains the most important question.
The answer is encouraging:
yes.
Age affects the body’s response to exercise, but it does not eliminate it.
This is also where we need to correct one of the stronger claims made in the original version of this article. At the time, we referred to an experiment involving men over 70 and suggested that training had almost eliminated the physical performance gap between the older participants and a group of 24-year-olds.
We would not repeat that conclusion today without much stronger evidence.
The modern literature supports a more measured — and sufficiently interesting — conclusion:
strength and power remain trainable in later life.
Ageing cannot be cancelled.
Some of its consequences can, however, be influenced.
But can getting stronger actually make your driver faster?
This is where the question becomes much more relevant to golfers.
Improving strength in a gym is one thing.
Moving a driver faster is another.
For years, golf fitness recommendations were based on a relatively small and heterogeneous body of research. That evidence base has gradually expanded, culminating in the 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis specifically examining the effects of physical training interventions on golf-shot performance.
The researchers searched the scientific literature in March 2026 and identified 33 eligible studies with 798 participants, including 26 controlled studies and seven single-group studies.
In the controlled trials, physical training improved clubhead speed by an average of 1.05 m/s (2.35 mph).
Ball speed improved by 2.20 m/s (4.92 mph).
Carry distance increased by 9.33 metres (10.2 yards).
Total distance increased by 10.55 metres (11.5 yards).
Those are not the spectacular numbers sometimes promised by golf marketing.
That is precisely why they are interesting.
For a golfer who is not trying to find 30 yards in a fortnight but simply wants to slow the erosion of their physical capacities — and perhaps regain some of what has already been lost — a couple of miles per hour can matter.
But there is another important qualification.
Those 798 participants were not 798 golfers over the age of 70. The studies involved different ages, standards of golfer and training protocols, and the researchers themselves rated the certainty of the controlled evidence as low. They explicitly called for better reported and more population-specific intervention studies.
We therefore cannot legitimately tell a 65-year-old golfer:
Train for eight weeks and you will gain ten yards.
That isn’t what the evidence says.
What it does suggest is considerably more credible:
structured physical training can improve variables directly related to golf performance, including clubhead speed and distance.
What should golfers actually train?
This is where an article about golf should avoid turning itself into a universal medical prescription.
Our earlier article discussed squats, jumps and medicine-ball throws. There was logic behind those choices. Strength, jumping performance and explosive upper-body ability are among the physical characteristics associated with clubhead speed in the research.
That does not mean a 72-year-old golfer who has never lifted weights should walk into a gym tomorrow, load a barbell to 85% of their maximum and start performing explosive jumps.
The principle is more important than a generic exercise prescription.
A programme designed to preserve or develop speed may address several complementary qualities: strength, the ability to express that strength rapidly, appropriate explosive movements and, ultimately, speed that is specific to the golf swing.
The appropriate combination will depend on the golfer.
Training history matters. So do previous injuries, joint health, balance, general fitness and medical history.
Two golfers can both be 68 years old and have dramatically different physical capacities.
Which is why “senior golfer” is a rather poor training prescription in itself.
You can lose distance without losing the same amount of speed
There is another trap worth avoiding.
Not every lost yard is caused by physical ageing.
Driver distance is not determined by clubhead speed alone.
Impact location, ball speed relative to club speed, dynamic loft, angle of attack, spin, launch conditions, equipment and the golf ball itself all contribute to the result. Technique can also change as a golfer ages, sometimes as an unconscious response to changing physical capabilities.
A player may therefore lose distance through several mechanisms at once.
Imagine a golfer who has lost 3 mph of clubhead speed but who is also striking the ball less consistently and producing too much spin. Those factors compound each other.
Making that golfer stronger may not solve the entire problem.
Conversely, appropriate equipment and fitting can sometimes recover useful distance without restoring all of the clubhead speed that has been lost, simply by making better use of the speed the golfer still possesses.
That is why measurement is more useful than assumption.
If a golfer genuinely wants to understand what has changed, periodically recording clubhead speed, ball speed, strike quality, launch, spin and carry with a reliable launch monitor can tell a much more useful story than simply saying:
I don’t hit it as far as I used to.
The first question should be:
What has actually declined?
Darren Clarke is an interesting reminder — but not scientific proof
The photograph accompanying this article shows Darren Clarke, and he provides an interesting illustration of golf and longevity.
The Northern Irishman was 42 years and 337 days old when he won The Open at Royal St George’s in 2011. He defeated Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson by three shots and became the oldest Champion Golfer since Roberto de Vicenzo in 1967.
That does not prove anything about ageing physiology.
Elite golfers are an exceptionally selected population, and using one successful professional as evidence for what an average 65-year-old amateur can achieve would be misleading.
But Clarke’s career does illustrate something more subtle about golf.
Unlike many sports, golf allows technical expertise, experience, strategy and physical capacity to interact over a very long playing life.
You do not need the body of a 25-year-old Tour professional to continue playing very good golf.
And you do not necessarily have to accept every physical decline without attempting to influence it.
The best time to think about your golf at 70 might be at 45
This was perhaps the strongest idea in our original article, and it remains relevant.
This subject is not really about senior golfers.
It is about all golfers who are getting older — which means all of us.
At 35, 45 or 55, maintaining strength and power may appear less urgent because the consequences of losing them have not yet become obvious. At 65 or 75, those qualities can become much more valuable.
The scientific evidence does not allow anyone to promise that training will preserve peak clubhead speed indefinitely.
Ageing exists.
Physiology changes.
Even with excellent training, nobody can sign a contract with their body guaranteeing the same physical capabilities at 75 that they possessed at 25.
But perhaps the useful choice is not between ageing and not ageing.
It is between getting older while allowing physical qualities that are no longer challenged to decline, and getting older while continuing to train at least some of them.
That also allows us to correct the overly categorical conclusion of our original article.
It would be wrong to say:
Age isn’t responsible for your loss of speed.
A more accurate statement in 2026 would be:
Age matters, but age isn’t the whole story.
Strength, power, physical activity, technique, injury history, health, training and equipment all contribute to the equation.
And the encouraging part is remarkably simple:
some of those variables remain trainable.
The latest golf-specific evidence suggests that physical training can produce measurable improvements in clubhead speed, ball speed and distance.
So the objective for an older golfer should probably not be to chase the driver they had at 25.
A better question is:
With the body you have today, have you genuinely reached your speed limit — or have you simply stopped training for speed?
