Case Study: Does Drinking While Golfing Ruin Your Game?

It doesn’t matter what your handicap is or how often you play, you’ll be hard pressed to find a golfer that doesn’t enjoy a cold beer on the course. Alcohol and golf go great together but do you really know how much it affects your game?

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This is the exact question that Golf Digest asked this week and they decided to conduct a test of how drinks can affect your game. There is such a wide variety of opinions when it comes to drinking on the course. Most people will say one to two beers is perfect to loosen up while others will say three to four is the perfect amount. To find out how this works, the Golf Digest editors decided to take three volunteers to the range and test out the theory.

For the test, they took three volunteers and judged them on three categories, driving distance, iron distance, putting accuracy. The three volunteers were all of different handicaps so the data wasn’t skewed. After a sober round, the group had 2 drinks before heading back out. After that, the players performed about the same, if not better, with some of the participants gaining distance on drives and approaches.

Andrew Johnston of England poses with a special edition Beefy’s Lager…

Andrew Johnston of England poses with a special edition Beefy’s Lager by Yenda during day one of the World Super 6 at Lake Karrinyup Country Club on February 8, 2018 in Perth, Australia. Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images

This is where things start to go downhill. The next leg had the party go for four drinks and they started to lose a bit of distance on their shots but maintained their putting stats. Next came six drinks, which had a major effect on the players. Two of the golfers had major drops in distance and only made one putt out of six attempts. They did eight drinks as well for fun and while they didn’t see major differences in distance, their accuracy was terrible.

The findings of this case may be surprising for some people. Of the three categories that were examined, distance decreased for some of the players but not to an incredibly extreme level. Accuracy, however, was the big difference, as one editor described their shots as being about as accurate as a Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn fastball.

Looking at the findings of this study, there really doesn’t seem to be that much of a difference, especially if you already have a nasty slice. So next time you step up for your next 18 holes, don’t have fear from taking along a six pack.

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