Golfer’s Elbow and How to Treat It

The short answer

Golfer's elbow is pain on the inside of your elbow, on the bony bump you can feel when you turn your palm up. Your forearm flexor tendons attach there, and those are the muscles that grip the club and turn your palm down through impact. The pain shows up at the elbow. The problem is almost always in the forearm below it.

That is why pressing on the sore bump rarely helps and often makes it worse. The useful work runs along the forearm, releasing the muscle that is pulling on that attachment, and then loading the tendon so it can take the strain again.

How to know it is golfer's elbow

Three things, and you can check all of them sitting down.

Find the bony bump on the inside of your elbow and press it. Golfer's elbow is tender right there or just below it. Then put your palm up, have someone push your hand down while you resist, and see if the same spot complains. Then grip something firmly. If gripping reproduces it, you have your answer.

Pain on the outside of the elbow instead is tennis elbow, which is the same kind of problem on the opposite side of the joint. Golfers get both. I have written separately about tennis elbow and why it lingers, and about padel elbow, which plenty of people here manage to collect in the same week as this one.

One thing that is not golfer's elbow: pins and needles or numbness running into your little finger and ring finger. The ulnar nerve passes behind that same bony bump, through a tunnel barely wide enough for it. When the nerve is the problem you get electrical symptoms rather than an ache. That needs looking at properly rather than treating as a tendon.

Why golf does this to the inside of the elbow

Your forearm flexors do two jobs in a golf swing, and both of them happen at the worst possible moment.

The first is grip. You hold the club for the whole swing, and many golfers hold it tighter than they need to, particularly when a shot matters. Tension in the grip means tension in the flexors, all the way up to that attachment at the elbow.

The second is pronation. Through impact your trail forearm rotates your palm downward and the club squares up. That rotation is driven by the same group of muscles, loaded hard, at speed, at the exact instant the clubhead hits something.

And then there is what the clubhead hits. A clean strike sends a manageable amount of shock up the shaft. A fat shot, where the club goes into the turf before the ball, sends a great deal more, and the forearm absorbs it. Which is why this injury tracks so closely with how cleanly you strike the ball.

Put those together and a pattern shows up. It tends to be the trail arm, the right arm for a right-handed golfer. And it tends to arrive after a spell of more golf than usual, or a session on a practice mat.

What the mats do

A driving range mat has no give. Hit behind the ball on grass and the club digs in and slows down. Hit behind the ball on a mat and the club bounces, and all of that energy goes up the shaft into your hands and forearms. An hour of range balls off a mat loads the inside of your elbow far more than eighteen holes does.

Self massage, and what to leave alone

You can do useful work on this yourself between sessions. The target is the muscle, not the bone.

Turn your palm up and find the soft fleshy part of your forearm, starting about two fingers' width below the elbow crease and running down toward the wrist. Work along it with your thumb, or roll it on a massage ball against a table, slowly, looking for the spots that feel ropey and tender. Sixty to ninety seconds on a spot that is genuinely sore is plenty. Then open and close your hand a few times while you hold pressure on it, which gives the tissue something to move against.

What to leave alone is the bony point itself. Digging into an irritated tendon attachment is the most common thing people do to this injury and the least useful. If it is sharp, you are on the wrong structure.

A massage gun is fine on the forearm muscle, kept moving, on a low setting. Keep it off the bone and off the inside of the elbow where the nerve runs. If you feel anything electrical, stop.

How I treat it

The assessment comes first, because the grip and the pronation tell me which part of the group is involved and whether the wrist and shoulder are contributing. A stiff shoulder makes the arm work harder to square the club, and the forearm pays for it.

Then soft tissue work along the flexor group, and Active Release Technique, which suits this particularly well. With ART the tissue is treated while it moves through its range, so I can take the forearm through pronation and wrist flexion under tension and work the restriction where it actually binds. Pressing on a still muscle does not find the same thing.

What I do not do is grind away at the sore point for twenty minutes and send you off feeling worked on.

The loading is what fixes it

Tendons respond to load, so loading it correctly is what actually resolves this. Treatment makes the loading possible and more comfortable. On its own it tends to buy relief that fades.

Start with isometrics, because they usually reduce pain rather than provoke it. Palm up, a light weight or a resistance band, hold the wrist still against the resistance for thirty seconds or so, several times, and stop short of real pain. When that is comfortable, move to slow lowering: curl the wrist up, then take five or six seconds to lower it, which is the part that builds the tendon.

The dose matters more than the exercise. Daily, light, and boring beats twice a week and heroic.

What to stop doing while it settles

Heavy gripping is the main one. Pull-ups with your palms facing you, heavy deadlifts without straps, and carrying shopping bags by the handles all load exactly the tissue you are trying to settle. Use straps, use a trolley, spread the load across your forearm.

Hard stretching early is the other one. Pulling an angry tendon attachment into a long stretch and holding it there tends to flare it up. Gentle movement, yes. Aggressive stretching, not yet.

How long it takes

Longer than people want. Weeks rather than days. A recent one that you have caught early and are willing to manage will often settle in three to six weeks. One you have been playing through since the spring can take a few months, because the tendon has had months of being told to carry on.

Two things set the timeline: reducing what causes it, and doing the loading. How often you see me matters far less than either. People who keep hitting a bucket of balls off a mat every day stay sore for a long time.

If you are here on a golf holiday

This is most of what I see, so a practical answer. You are not going to resolve a tendon problem in a week, and you did not fly to the Algarve to rest. What is realistic is getting you through the week with less pain and not making it worse.

That usually means a session to settle the forearm, a lighter grip, and taking the practice mat out of your week entirely. Warm the forearms up before a round rather than after. If you are playing consecutive days, tell me. Deep work the night before a round is a good way to play badly, so I would rather keep it light and save the heavier work for the end of your trip.

If it is the kind of pain that has stopped you mid-round, that is worth looking at before your next tee time rather than after. I treat at the clinic in Almancil and travel to villas in Quinta do Lago, Vale do Lobo and Vilamoura.

When to see a doctor instead

Numbness or pins and needles into the little and ring fingers. Grip weakness clearly worse than the pain explains. An elbow that locks or catches. Pain that arrived suddenly during a swing, with a pop. None of those are tendinopathy, and all of them want a proper examination.

Booking

I treat golfers at the clinic in Almancil and travel to villas and hotels across the central Algarve. Clinic sessions are €37 for 30 minutes, €52 for 45 and €60 for an hour. Mobile sessions are €140 per hour. The golf massage page covers how a golf session runs and what gets assessed. Message me on WhatsApp on 925 382 490 and tell me which arm it is and whether gripping makes it worse.