Study: Golf can add five years to life

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, May 31 (UPI) -- Golf could add an extra five years to the life spans of regular players, Swedish researchers say.

The study, performed by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, contends that a close look at 500,000 golfers showed that there were many health benefits to playing the game, including a longer and healthier life, The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.

The golf study was published in the latest issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports and defined a round of golf as lasting four or five hours while walking at a fast pace.

"People play golf into old age, and there are also positive social and psychological aspects to the game that can be of help," Anders Ahlbom, leader of the Swedish study, told the Telegraph, adding that the longest lifespan increases came among golfers with blue collar economic backgrounds as opposed to those with professional jobs.

Also, the newspaper said, those golfers with the lowest handicaps also had the lower death rates, and that overall golfers at any age were 47 percent less likely to die than their non-golfing, same-age counterparts.