Don't Slow Down: The Case for the Harder Round at 70

Dear reader,

The cluster's other senior pieces are properly balanced. They walk through the walkability ratings, the senior rates, the trip-pacing manual, the mobility considerations. They give honest information for senior golfers making accommodation calls about the round and the trip.

This letter is the contrarian companion. After watching most senior golfers I know retreat to the easier courses in their late 60s and 70s — and the few who didn't, who kept playing the harder rounds, enjoy their golf more — the contrarian view: for most 70+ golfers, the right answer is to keep playing the harder rounds, not less of them.

This is uncomfortable advice. It runs against the comfort-and-pace-of-play orthodoxy that most senior golf marketing assumes. It also runs against the medical advice some readers will reasonably weigh more heavily than mine. The cluster's other pieces give the orthodox view honestly. This letter is the single dissenting voice; read it, weigh it, decide for yourself.

The retreat I keep watching

Most committed Scottish golfers I know in their mid-60s through 70s have retreated. They were playing Royal Dornoch and Cruden Bay and Carnoustie at 60; they're playing Bruntsfield Links and the local muni at 72. The shift happens gradually — usually in response to a specific event (a hip replacement; a difficult round; a friend who stopped playing because of an injury) — but the pattern is consistent.

The retreat is comfortable. It removes the difficulty of the harder courses. It produces shorter, easier rounds with less physical demand. The advocates of the retreat — and there are many — argue it's the correct adaptation to ageing. The golf is still happening; it's just at the right scale for the body.

Three reasons I think the retreat is usually wrong.

Reason one: the body adapts to what you ask of it

The clinical evidence on physical decline in older adults is consistent in one direction — physical capacity tracks demand. The 70-year-old who walks five miles a day for golf rounds maintains the cardiovascular fitness, the leg strength, and the endurance needed to keep walking five miles a day. The 70-year-old who retreats to the local muni and walks two miles per round loses the conditioning that the harder rounds were maintaining.

This is the most counterintuitive piece of the case. The retreat is presented as protective — "I've moved to easier courses because my hip is going" — but the retreat is often what's accelerating the hip's decline. The body that walked Royal Dornoch's championship loop at 65 stops being able to walk it at 70 partly because, in the intervening years, you stopped asking it to.

The harder courses are physical training, not just golf. The retreat removes the training; the body responds; the next harder course becomes harder still. The pattern compounds.

Reason two: the courses are the point

When I think about the rounds I most clearly remember from my own golf — the rounds that have stayed with me across decades — they are almost universally rounds at the harder courses. The St Andrews Old Course in a wind. Cruden Bay's 4th tee shot off the high cliff. The 14th 'Foxy' at Royal Dornoch in evening light. The Postage Stamp at Royal Troon.

These are not the rounds at Carrick Knowe or Bruntsfield Links. Those are perfectly good rounds. They produce different memory; they don't produce that memory.

For the 70+ golfer making the calculus, the question isn't just whether the body can manage the harder course — it's whether the years remaining justify the retreat from the courses that produce the memorable rounds. For most senior golfers, the answer is no. There are perhaps fifteen-to-twenty more golf years in the average 70-year-old's body. Spending them at the easier courses to preserve a body that won't last anyway is a structural mistake.

The harder rounds are where the memories live. The retreat removes them.

Reason three: the recovery is faster than you think

The medical orthodoxy about senior recovery is genuinely cautious — and the caution is reasonable when applied to acute injury. But the broader version of the caution — "you can't expect to recover from a hard round at 70 like you did at 50" — is often overstated.

Most healthy 70-year-olds recover from a 4-mile golf walk in 24-48 hours of normal activity. The same body that allegedly can't take the round bounces back in time for another round on the third day. The recovery is slower than at 50, but it's not as slow as the senior-golf marketing suggests.

The honest implication: a 70+ golfer who plays Royal Dornoch on Tuesday can play Brora on Thursday. The trip-planning that assumes one round per day-of-rest is more conservative than the body actually requires. Build the trip on real recovery rates, not assumed ones.

Who should retreat

To be fair to the orthodoxy: there are senior golfers for whom the retreat is correct. Three categories:

1. The post-acute-injury golfer. Recent hip / knee / back surgery; recent cardiovascular event; recent fall with significant injury. The retreat is medically appropriate and should be honoured.

2. The genuinely-physically-restricted golfer. Mobility limitations that would make the harder courses unsafe — not just challenging, but actually unsafe. Significant balance issues, COPD, end-stage arthritis. The retreat protects the safety of the round.

3. The golfer for whom the harder round produces no enjoyment. The 75-year-old who finds the cliff stretch at Cruden Bay anxiety-inducing rather than memorable should not play it. Personal psychology counts; if the harder course is making the round worse rather than better, retreat is correct.

Outside these three, the retreat is usually wrong. The body responds to the demand; the courses are where the memories live; the recovery is faster than the marketing suggests.

Three working principles for the contrarian senior

1. Pick one harder course per trip. Don't retreat entirely; don't insist on five marquee rounds in a week. The right shape: three rounds across a trip, one of them at a harder course you'd be tempted to skip. Royal Dornoch Championship at 70 is genuinely doable; the round is the memory the trip is built around.

2. Train for the harder round. Two months of 30-minute daily walks before the trip. Specific lower-body strength work (squats, lunges, calf raises) that maintains the legs. Stretching for the back rotation. The training isn't optional for the contrarian senior; it's what makes the harder round possible.

3. Use the equipment that compensates. The cluster's mobility piece covers the senior-spec equipment that genuinely helps. Lighter graphite-shaft irons; hybrid rescue clubs; walking poles for the climbing stretches. The equipment converts a marginally-walkable round into a comfortably-walkable one. Use it.

What the retreat costs

For me — and I'm in my late 50s, so I'm watching this from the cusp rather than from inside it — the most affecting recent observation has been a friend who is now 73. He retreated from the harder courses at 67 after a knee operation, on his cardiologist's recommendation (which was reasonable advice at the time). He played the easier muni rounds for five years; his fitness declined slowly; the muni rounds became harder; by 72 he had stopped playing entirely because even the muni round felt like effort.

A different friend, also 73, kept playing the harder courses through the same period — Royal Dornoch every May, Carnoustie every July, the home course (Royal Burgess) twice a week throughout. His body changed in the same general ways as the first friend's, but the conditioning of regular harder rounds preserved the underlying capacity. He's still playing; the friend who retreated isn't.

I'm not making the medical case here — both friends had legitimate clinical considerations. I am making the broader case: the retreat is more often the cause of the eventual stopping than the protective response it presents itself as.

For the 70+ golfer reading this who has the choice — who isn't constrained by acute injury or genuine physical restriction — the contrarian advice is: don't slow down. Pick the harder rounds. Train for them. Play them. The body responds to demand; the memories live in the harder rounds; the years left are more limited than the retreat-now-play-easier-later orthodoxy assumes.

This is the contrarian view. It is wrong for some readers — the medical considerations vary; respect your own. For most senior golfers, though, the harder round is the right round, even — especially — at 70.

Yours, contrarianly,

Birdie Brae