Wearable-Derived Sleep and Physiological Metrics Are Associated With Performance in Professional Golfers

Elite golf performance hinges on physiological and psychological precision, with success often defined by razor-thin margins. Sleep and cardiac autonomic function, reflected by resting heart rate (RHR) and heart-rate variability (HRV), are indicators of recovery and readiness, yet their role in golf remains understudied.

We analyzed wearable-derived data from 389 male professional golfers across 521 events, totaling 35,140 nights of monitoring. Key metrics included sleep duration (7.2 [0.7] h), sleep consistency (regularity of sleep/wake times; 69.1% [6.9%]), RHR (55.9 [7.9] beats·min-1), HRV (root mean square of successive differences; 64.2 [28.1] milliseconds), and a composite recovery score (integrating sleep and biometric data; 59.1% [9.9%]). Objective golf performance (total score, great/poor shots, strokes gained) was extracted from a subscription-based database. Models assessed between-persons differences and within-person changes across seasons (using seasonal averages), adjusting for age (34.1 [9.1] y), height (1.81 [0.07] m), and weight (83.2 [10.6] kg).

Golfers with longer and more consistent sleep, lower RHR, and higher HRV performed better (P < .05). Between athletes, each additional hour of sleep was associated with a lower score (b = -0.522), as was a 10-percentage-point increase in sleep consistency (b = -0.382), a 1-beat-per-minute lower RHR (b = -0.038), and a 10-percentage-point increase in recovery (b = -0.476). Within athletes, improvements in sleep consistency (b = -0.193 per 10 percentage points), HRV (b = -0.016 per 1 millisecond), and recovery (b = -0.238 per 10 percentage points) were also associated with lower scores (P < .05).

Sleep and cardiac autonomic function were associated with elite golf performance. Both individual differences and within-athlete improvements were linked to better play, highlighting the potential role of sleep, RHR, and HRV in optimizing performance at the highest level of golf.