Rory McIlroy’s final round at Augusta highlights the power of a good night’s sleep

about 3 years in The Irish Times

Rory McIlroy matched the lowest score ever for a final round at the Masters with an eight under 64 on Sunday - after one of his best sleeps the night before.
The Irishman spent 51 minutes more in bed than usual, getting almost nine hours into him before going bogey free to finish second at Augusta earning him a payday of €1.62 million, a silver salver, a silver medal and also a crystal vase for the low finishing round.
McIlroy’s Whoop told him he’d spent eight hours and 54 minutes in bed on Saturday night, after finishing his third round just before 5pm local time.
The data revealed to The Irish Times also shows McIlroy had three per cent more REM sleep than his 30 day baseline (29 per cent compared to 26 per cent). REM sleep is the time when new learnings from the day are committed to long-term memory, and McIlroy certainly took the learnings of the first three days of the tournament to card by far his best round of the week.
His sleep performance was nine per cent higher than his 30 day baseline and his resting heart rate was two bpm below his baseline (49 bpm vs 51 bpm).
When he brilliantly holed from the bunker on the 18th his heart rate jumped to 143bpm.
His recovery score on Monday morning - he teed off at 1.50pm local time - after three days battling the elements at a windy Augusta, was 73 per cent.
McIlroy’s average daily recovery score at the end of the 2021 season was 65 per cent.
While you’d normally expect the strain of golf tournaments to take their toll as the weekend unfolds, McIlroy’s highest average recoveries during tournaments in 2021 came on Sundays. And he repeated the trick over the weekend, highlighting his professionalism but also the power of a good night’s sleep.
“In this day and age in golf, with the technology that’s out there, everyone is closer together,” McIlroy previously explained regarding his use of the wearable fitness tracker. “The difference between the number one ranked player in the world and number 100 is actually pretty small. I want to do everything I possibly can to get an advantage.
“I started wearing Whoop because I just wanted to know more about my body and myself and how I recover, I just wanted to optimise what I do.”

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