The bogeys and double bogeys at the U.S. Open earlier this month were usually attributed to the same factors: Oakmont’s dense rough and slick greens, plus a little bit of major championship pressure. No one thought to consider if the golfer might have had a lame breakfast.
It would be a stretch to say the most demanding tournament in golf hinged on what players ate and drank in preparation, but their nutrition likely played a larger role than we can appreciate. According to Amy Bragg, the director of performance nutrition for University of Alabama athletics, including their men’s and women’s golf teams, 35 percent of our energy expended comes from our brains. Which means when a difficult golf course requires more thought than usual, the fuel we rely on matters more as well.
After players described the mental and physical toll of playing in the U.S. Open, I reached out to Bragg to get a better sense of the ways golfers of all levels can be smarter about what they eat and drink, and how our eating habits can even influence our play.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Amy, if a golfer wants to eat the right way in preparation for a grueling test like the U.S. Open, when do you propose it should start?
Golf is a very unique sport because the competitions are days long, and because they all require travel. In general, I feel that athletes and teams overfocus on game-day nutrition. It’s always important to say that your daily nutrition is more important because that determines your overall well-being, but in golf, the day of competition matters, too. Most golfers that I have worked with have a ritual eating plan during 18 holes. They eat every three or four holes, or at the turn. And then there’s hydration. If they're going into hostile conditions, meaning humidify and heat, the hydration planning needs to begin before they even get on a flight.
When you start working with someone, what is the first thing you need to address in terms of their eating habits?
People don't have a good recovery ritual. They're not getting protein after a workout or practice within 30 minutes, and that's really important for muscle restoration. Think of an activity like a rock thrown in the lake. And the rock makes waves. What we want to do at the end of the workout is get the lake back to still. And one of the ways you kick that off is to have protein and carbohydrates within 30 minutes of a lift.
What’s the ideal ratio for golfers in terms of carbohydrates to protein?
There’s a spectrum. In general, you want the ratio to be two-to-one carbohydrates-to-protein. If you're trying to lean somebody down while maintaining performance, maybe you want more of a one-to-one protein-to-carbohydrate ratio. And for some golfers that's OK. I tend to focus on just getting the right amount of protein in a 24-hour cycle.
How much is that?
If they're an active athlete, let's do a round number and say 150 grams. I've been a sports nutritionist for 20 years and golfers are so much more athletic than they used to be. There's so much more training and strength involved, the protein and the timing thereof has become more important.
PAUL ELLIS
That was going to be my next question. You get a lot of people who would say, ‘Listen, I'm not a football player or a basketball player. I don't need to be focused on my nutrition to the same extent in golf.’ What is your response?
Well, in golf competition, there is a huge mental demand. And when you play those rounds, 35 percent of your daily expenditure goes to your brain. What I find with people who show up at an appointment and say, ‘I'm just a golfer, I don't need to worry,’ they tend to undereat carbohydrates and they don't hydrate well. You really have to work to get them to hydrate well.
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If I'm undernourished, how does that manifest in a round of golf? Poor decision-making? A lack of energy to stay on task?
Yes. The symptoms sometimes vary by golfer. If I'm assessing somebody, I’ll say where do your strokes fall off. They all kind of have something in their minds, the 12th hole, the 17th hole. That’s where we will back up from there and try to address in making a plan and trying to overcome that. You can see somebody getting fuzzy at specific times, and they all have analytics they use to confirm.
What are some foods that you like to see golfers eating?
I like to see fruit, of course. I like to see trail mix. I've had a lot of people eat peanut butter and jelly, you know, eat half of it here and half of it there. Protein bars depend on the bar, because not everything's ideal for performance. Cliff bars and Kind bars are both good. Years ago I saw a golfer eating broccoli on the course, and I was like, ‘Well that's odd.’ Not to be against broccoli because I'm a dietitian, of course. But it's not going to give you any energy yield. Same thing with jerky. It may have some protein to it, but it's not going to help with energy or inflammation.
Going back to what you were saying about how competition weeks start before you get on the plane, what's a balanced diet? What am I having for dinner and lunch in the days leading up to a big event that you'd like to see?
I like to see color—fruits, vegetables, the prescribed amount of protein. We might start drinking something with some extra sodium in it, like those electrolyte packets. A lot of these guys live in Florida, so they're pretty acclimated to it. But it's never a bad idea to pre-hydrate the day before travel. It's important to remember every hour in the air, you're actually losing fluid, so you have to drink to offset that.
And if I were to ask you to wave a magic wand and say, ‘This is the one thing I'd like to eliminate from people's diets,’ what would you say?
I mean, it's always good to just say fast food. As much as golfers travel, they need to have a plan for that. If you're getting something fried, the frying oil is going to be used over and over, so it’s super saturated and very inflammatory. It's just a bad idea.
This article first appeared in Low Net, a Golf Digest+ exclusive newsletter written for the average golfer, by an average golfer. Have a topic you want me to explore? Send me an email and I'll do my best to dive in.