Golf Tips and Golf News

A study of a dozen golfers with severe sleep apnoea has shown it to have an impact on golf handicaps!

Sleep apnoea is a condition in which oxygen flow becomes so disrupted during sleep that the suffer can actually stop breathing for upwards of 10 seconds at a time! It causes loud snoring that disrupts sleep and makes the sufferer particularly irritable and sleepy the next day, due to a lack of decent sleep. Dr Marc Benton declares that the “daytime sleepiness, fatigue, and cognitive impairment” caused by sleep apnoea can have a profound impact on one’s ability to play golf.



By treating 12 golfers suffering from severe sleep apnoea over 3 to 5 months, using an oxygen mask at night; researchers in New Jersey discovered that, over the course of 20 rounds of golf, the golfers handicaps improved! Of course, it’s arguable that your handicap will improve after 20 rounds of golf anyway; hence the expression ‘practice makes perfect’. However, with an estimated 3.5% of all British men suffering from sleep apnoea, it could well be that these people have stumbled upon a relatively quick fix for your game!

Neil Friedman, co-author of the study, said "The drop in handicap among the better golfers probably reflected that the major limiting factor was not golf skill but cognitive compromise that improved when the sleep apnoea was treated." Now, if only they could build oxygen masks into golf clothes, maybe we'd all be pros by Christmas! Or would that essentially be doping? Interesting...more research is needed!