Many a golf widow might tell you that long hours spent on the course lead to a chap being under par in bed... but now scientists say that the opposite is true.

For when it comes to golfers, it appears that regularly swinging a club on the green is no handicap to your sex life.

In fact, far from the old stereotype of middle-aged men replacing sex with golf, it seems that the sport boosts the libido and keeps more men sexually active. 

Golfers are not only more likely to have sex than men who do nothing but also more likely than other sportsmen to do so, according to the first in-depth study of the love lives of men who play the game.

And researchers believe the physics of a golf swing could even be responsible for a good performance in bed, pointing out that the swing is ‘a complex, whole-body movement requiring both strength and precision, based on a precisely co-ordinated sequence of muscle activations to enable a smooth and repeatable motion’.

The research by the Technical University of Munich examined more than 8,000 men aged around 50 who were divided into three groups – golfers, other sportsmen and those who played no sport. Of the golfers, 96.7 per cent were still sexually active, compared to 90 per cent of other sportsmen and 85 per cent of non-sporty men.

Around half of the golfers had more sexual partners in their lifetime than the others, the medical journal Urologie reported. 

These golfers said they had had 11 or more partners while only a third of other sportsmen and three in ten of the inactive men said the same.

The research found over a quarter of the golfers had sex twice a week, dropping to less than a fifth of other sportsmen and less than two in ten of the third group.

Golfers were also less likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction with just over a quarter saying it had been an issue compared to a third of other sportsmen and over four in ten of the inactive group.

There were no results on another subject often linked to golfers – their ability to embroider the truth.