Nutrition

Are you the kind of golfer who eats a hot dog or candy bar at the turn?  Of course you are. This is what most people seem to do. Grab some sort of food at the turn, whatever looks good, and head off to the 10th tee. Does it matter what we eat? Candy bar, energy bar, something with more protein like hot dog or hamburger?  Does it even matter if we eat at all? Most people aren’t even feeling hungry at the turn, it just seems like we should eat something, so we do. Or we don’t. Some people won’t eat anything while playing. While the research on this topic doesn’t point to a specific number of strokes you’ll gain through proper nutrition, it does show some eye opening results.

How does it work? 

Blood glucose is the key here. If you are one of the 530 million people living with diabetes you already know how important and critical this topic is. Our body runs on glucose. It powers our cells, muscles, and brain. If it dips too low our cells can’t work correctly and we will see motor and mental function decline. If you are a person who does not have diabetes, your body does a very good job of regulating your blood sugar. It will keep sugar levels in a safe range by releasing certain chemicals to raise or lower your glucose level based on when or what we have eaten recently. But even non-diabetics will see a decline in blood glucose levels if we haven’t eaten recently. Enter the “HANGRY” person. Thanks to a certain candy bar TV commercial, we are all familiar with “HANGER”. A person’s blood sugar got too low and now they are easily agitated, impatient, frustrated, anxious, and angry. Not a good state for optimal golf.

Enough with the biology course, how does this affect your golf game? Nagashima et al. reports that “hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) during golf can lead to concentration loss, irritability, impaired judgment, cognitive performance decline, and high ratings of self-perceived fatigue.” (7) “HANGER”. This spells disaster for your golf game.  Picture this: a poor tee shot due to lack of concentration (you didn’t notice the bunker on right side of the fairway, or the small creek on the left), you get mad at yourself for being careless with your tee shot so you beat yourself up internally on the way to the ball, once there you decide to try the hero shot to “make up” for your tee shot blunder and put your approach in an even worse spot. The anger builds from there and next thing you know you are writing down double bogey (or worse) on the score card.  This is an all-too-common scene on the golf course. Sure, it’s not low blood sugar that causes it every time, but it’s likely the culprit more often than you’d think.

During a competitive round of golf, blood glucose can significantly decrease by 10–30% without nutritional intake, which can negatively impact focus, decision making and depth perception. (4) The Nagashima et al .study showed this decline in blood glucose level starts as early as the 4th hole, even when subjects ate a sizeable meal 30 mins prior to teeing off. Their study showed differences in concentration starting even before the 4th hole.  So, if we are waiting until the 9th hole to eat, that’s 3 holes in an optimal state for play and 6 (or 15) playing with an impaired mental state.

In the Nagashima (7) study, they had golfers eat a carbohydrate snack (sugar gummies) on every hole to keep blood sugar up and compared them to a group that ate nothing during the round, just a large meal 30 mins prior to tee time. Blood glucose was continually monitored. Decrease in blood sugar started at hole 4 for the non-eaters. Perceived levels of fatigue were significantly higher starting at hole 6 and perceived levels of concentration were lower for all 18 holes. ALL 18 HOLES.  Snacking starting at the very first hole showed an immediate benefit. Do we still want to wait until the 9th hole for our first bite of food?

These findings are consistent with other studies as well. Stevenson et al. (5) showed significant differences when ingesting carbohydrates during the round vs not. They found significant improvement in putting performance from 5 and 2 meters, significant differences in self reported alertness, relaxation, mental fatigue and tiredness.  Putting. in a lab setting, from 2 meters showed 70% success rate for the snackers vs 50% for non-snackers. From 5 meters, 40% vs 25%. The number of successful putts for the 18 hole round was also significantly better for the snack group.  Surely you won’t wait until the turn to start snacking now. Who really needed an excuse to snack more anyway?

How to apply this to your game

So, when do we start eating? What do we eat? And how much? This is based on individual preferences. I’ll give some guidelines and you can choose the foods you enjoy that fit the criteria. Recommendations from research show we need 30-60g of carbs during exercise. (6) Let’s say 18 holes takes somewhere between 3-5 hours (be sure to include warm up on range or warm up of choice). That’s 90g on the low end and 250g on the high end. Nagashima used 150g for their study so let’s go with that but know that it could be more or less based on your individual game.

Healthy food should always be your first choice but that’s not always possible. There is nothing wrong with having a candy bar every now and then, but I’ll list some healthy options first. Below is a table that shows the amount of carbohydrates in typical snacks you could find on the golf course. Personally, I bring trail mix, an apple, a banana, and maybe a snack bar as well. Remember from the hydration article that we need to be replacing salt lost through sweat, so trail mix is a great way to get some carbs and salt at the same time.

If you are wanting something different than what’s listed, you can always read the nutritional label and find the total carbs. We are looking for a couple of snacks that will add up to around 150g. Ideally you would start snacking after your warm-up, before the first tee and continue to graze on your snacks until the end of the round.    

Why only focus on carbs?  Without getting too deep into physiology, we are only looking for readily available energy. Think of protein as mostly a building block for muscles. Protein can be used for glucose but it’s not the most efficient path to get there. Same goes for Fat. Fat is turned into glucose to be utilized by the body, but it takes a much longer time than if we just ingest carbs to start with. During exercise, our body has other things to deal with than going through long processes in the search of sugar. It is much more efficient to give your body what it needs when it needs it. Focus on healthy carbs and your body will do the rest.

Summary

·      Dips in blood glucose levels lead to concentration loss, irritability, impaired judgment, cognitive performance decline, high ratings of self-perceived fatigue and decreased putting performance.

·      Blood glucose levels decline enough to make a significant impact on your score by the 4th hole. Concentration is impacted as early as the 1st hole.

·      We need to ingest about 150g (ideally) of healthy carbs throughout 18 holes to avoid dips in blood glucose.

·      Start snacking before the first hole.

 References

4 Berlin, N.; Cooke, M.B.; Belski, R. Nutritional Considerations for Elite Golf: A Narrative Review. Nutrients 2023, 15, 4116. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15194116

5 Stevenson, E. J., Hayes, P. R., & Allison, S. J. (2009). The effect of a carbohydrate-caffeine sports drink on simulated golf performance. Applied physiology, nutrition, and metabolism = Physiologie appliquee, nutrition et metabolisme, 34(4), 681–688. https://doi.org/10.1139/H09-057

6 Zoffer M. (2022). Competitive Golf: How Longer Courses Are Changing Athletes and Their Approach to the Game. Nutrients, 14(9), 1732. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14091732

7 Nagashima, Y., Ehara, K., Ehara, Y., Mitsume, A., Kubo, K., & Mineo, S. (2023). Effects of Continuous Carbohydrate Intake with Gummies during the Golf Round on Interstitial Glucose, Golf Performance, and Cognitive Performance of Competitive Golfers: A Randomized Repeated-Measures Crossover Design. Nutrients, 15(14), 3245. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15143245