“I learned you can’t drink whiskey and play golf.” – John Daly
By Ian Hardie
Ever had a round of golf that the further you went
The harder ‘work’ it seemed?
You felt more and more tired as you went along
You struggled to concentrate
Your body temperature increased so much that you started to feel uncomfortable
And no matter how well you were playing in your previous round or practice session
Your technique and abilities seemed to have completely disappeared?
A lot of golfers apparently do
And it comes down to a simple thing
Those golfers that experience what I have described above
Aren’t drinking on the golf course
Well actually to be more correct, it would be more like
They are not drinking enough before they play and while on the golf course
Turns out that drinking while playing golf
Is incredibly important
In fact I would go so far as to say it should be compulsory to
Drink water while playing golf and lots of it!
What did you think I was talking about?
Before you go any further though – this is going to get a bit technical
And potentially outside my area of expertise
So make sure you read my Disclaimer before you go on
The states described above are symptoms of something called Dehydration
Which occurs when the body eliminates a greater quantity of water
Or receives a lesser amount than it requires
To adequately cover its needs during an activity
Considering that most golfers either don’t take a drink or if they do
They take one that would be less than a litre in size
Most golfers potentially suffer dehydration to some degree
Nearly every round they play
Mainly because instead of keeping themselves fully hydrated during the round
They generally only react to their feelings of ‘thirst’
Which apparently because they take a bit of time to come to us
Only do so once we have water loss of around 1 – 1.5% of body weight
And you might think that’s not that important
Until you read the following;
The elimination during a round of more than 2% of body weight by dehydration reduces our physical capacity by between 5% and 10%
That’s a pretty big decline in performance!
One that is basically influenced by our water intake during a round
And it gets worse;
More than 3% loss of weight by dehydration during a round lowers the capacity of muscle contraction by more than 20% and muscle cramps can begin
The scariest fact that I found;
If during a round you had more than 8% loss of body weight by dehydration there may be a serious risk of death
I’m pretty sure that’s not ideal!
So it seems there is a fine line between feeling thirsty on the golf course
Which most experts will agree is actually too late to start drinking water
And becoming badly dehydrated on the way around
As for the effect that this dehydration can have on golfers performance
I found this brief study summary
‘EFFECT OF ACUTE MILD DEHYDRATION ON COGNITIVE-MOTOR PERFORMANCE IN GOLF Smith M.F., Newell A.J., Baker M.R (2011)’
Which was done on 7 low handicap amateur golfers a couple of years back
The numbers are pretty sobering
It looks like they started by having the golfers perform three skill tests as a base line
Target accuracy, distance control and total distance
The study then induced a 2% dehydration in the golfers
Which with the average weight of participants being 75kg
Means the golfers lost 1.5kg from dehydration during their round
They then tested the golfers skills using the same tests as prior to their round
The average base line target accuracy was 4.1m before
Which nearly halved to 7.9m after only 2% dehydration
The golfers distance control of 4.8m
Suffered similarly, moving out to a 8.4m variation
The total distance of their shots (I’m not sure how this was measured)
Went from 128.6m base line
Down to 114.4m after 2% dehydration
Does that go some way to explaining how sometimes on the golf course
It just doesn’t go as you think it should?
I’m going to cover how to work out the amount you need to drink while on the golf course
And a few other things about hydration
In ‘Why you need to seriously consider drinking while playing golf – part two’ soon
Until then take some water with you if you don’t already
And of course
Drink it before you feel thirsty!
Play well
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