Know your injury

Tennis elbow vs golfer’s elbow

Epicondylitis is a condition involving pain in your elbow, sometimes also in your forearm and/or wrist. It’s typically caused by overloading the tendons on the outer and inner side of the elbow. This condition often appears in one of two variations:

• Tennis elbow, which is on the outside of the elbow, ie lateral epicondylitis
• Golfer’s elbow, which is on the inside of the elbow, ie medial epicondylitis

The terms “tennis elbow” and “golfer’s elbow” are perhaps misnomers, as these conditions are not limited to athletes. They typically occur as the result of manual labor injuries, especially from tasks involving many repetitive wrist movements (e.g. carpentry or painting). In a sports, as the names suggest, practitioners affected by the conditions tend to be tennis, badminton or golf players.