Golf related ocular injuries are comparatively rare to other injuries but the outcomes are often severe. According to this review, supervision of children using the golf equipment was motivated as a prevention parameter to avoid it.

The authors aimed to analyze the causes and outcomes of golf-related ocular injuries in this retrospective meta-analysis, literature review, and original case series.

Forty-one articles identified by PubMed search resulted in 11 included studies yielding 102 subjects. Included articles described all ocular golf injuries that presented to an institution during a determined period. Eight factors were analyzed: age, sex, location and mechanism of injury, protective eyewear use, resulting open-globe injury, resulting enucleation, and visual acuity changes.

No subjects wore adequate protective eyewear. Significantly more subjects were injured by golf balls (72%) than golf clubs (27%) or foreign body (1%) (P < 0.0001). The ratio of golf ball to club injuries was significantly higher in adults (92%) than in children (23%) (P < 0.0001). Forty-seven of 93 (51%) injuries resulted in an open globe, whereas 27/82 (33%) injuries resulted in enucleation. The mean +/- SD logMAR visual acuity improved by -0.641 +/- 0.745 after treatment (>6 lines of improvement; P = 0.0001).

Reported ocular golf injuries occur less frequently than other ocular sports injuries, but may result in devastating outcomes. Supervision of children using golf equipment should be encouraged.