Could this activity involving lower temperatures help lower your golf scores?
Golf Digest senior writer Alex Myers is on a one-year mission to see how good he can get at golf through daily training, practice and playing. Read more from his “Late Scratch?” series here.
In my first meeting with Quaker Ridge head pro Mario Guerra, he suggested several ways to help me lower my handicap—from signing up for tournaments to posting scores from shorter yardages. But there was one idea involving lower temperatures that I’d never considered.
Mario wanted me to start doing . . . cold plunges? Yep, cold plunges.
Before Mario’s convincing conversation, the closest thing I’d ever done to a cold plunge was running my kids out to the streetcorner in the morning to get the school bus. But I was game to try anything that could help my golf game. And here’s why doing this could help yours too.
Wait, what are cold plunges?
Cold plunges or cold-water immersion is the practice of submerging oneself in cold water for a few minutes. Why would someone, let alone a pro golfer, put themselves through what sounds like a form of torture?
"It's great for clearing lactic acid buildup, which helps the muscles recover faster and prevents stiffness," says Dave Phillips, Jon Rahm’s coach and a Golf Digest Top 50 Teacher, said during the 2023 Open Championship.
"There’s a dopamine hit effect," added Dr. Harry Sese, another member of Rahm’s team. "It helps recovery, and players feel great after they do them."
Justin Rose has one in his “recovery vehicle” that has him playing arguably the best golf of his life at 45. And they’re even part of the mandatory “player recovery tents” that are now at all PGA Tour stops beginning in 2024. Here's one from the Farmers Championship:
But as Mario explained to me, there's an even more golf-specific reason to give them a try.
Get comfortable getting uncomfortable
Shooting lower scores is largely a physical accomplishment, but it also comes with mental barriers. What golfer hasn’t felt extra nerves over a big putt? Or “choked” under pressure? My annual golf trip is filled with these tales of which I’ve been both the victim and beneficiary. Golf is always hard, but it becomes even harder in certain spots.
As Mario explains, it’s during those times that blood rushes to a golfer’s internal organs and away from the extremities. This makes it harder to pull off a golf shot because your hands lose feeling and your muscles tense up while your heart rate goes up. Which is also what happens when you take a cold plunge.
“It puts your body in fight-or-flight mode,” Guerra tells me of taking these chilly dips. “And the more you get used to that feeling, the better you’ll be prepared to handle it when it happens on the golf course.”
I had told Mario about how nervous I felt down the stretch during a recent round of a lifetime and he believed this could help me deal with that pressure better. Heck, I'd need to if I was going to shoot more scores like that to attain my lofty goal of getting down to a scratch handicap. And a growing number of pro golfers over the past few years are doing them to achieve their own goals. In 2022, Sebastian Munoz surprised reporters when he mentioned how he’d been incorporating cold plunges into his Presidents Cup preparation.
"I've been training my mind a little bit," Munoz said ahead of the biennial team competition, "trying to take some ice plunges and trying to get in uncomfortable situations and being able to hold in there, just to be able to push, just to be able to know that I'm not as fragile as I may think."
As someone known to be a tad on the fragile side, I decided I could probably use some toughening up as well. And if it helped my golf game in the process? Even better.
Ease your way in
I’ve been called a "delicate flower" by golf buddies through the years for believing any temperature under 65 is cold for golf. I’ll play—well, to a point—but I won’t be thrilled about it. So I knew I’d need to ease my way into this. And doing it in my own bathtub—and not in frigid outdoor water or one of the PGA Tour's much fancier cold plunge tubs—made this doable. I don't think I'd ever used this in the 10-plus years I've lived in my house:
Mario believed the tap water could get as cold as the high 40s during the winter. (I don’t want to actually measure it because I want to think I’m really toughing it out, but anything below 60 degrees should suffice.) But whatever the temperature is, it’s not pleasant—especially for the initial 10 seconds or so. You're going to want to take steady, deep breaths as your body reacts to the shock.
I use the three-count in-and-out breath I started doing during my work with Dr. Josh Brant at the Golf Performance Center back in 2022. It helped me deal with pressure on my way to winning my buddies trip that year and now it helps me deal with my body gasping for air as I lay in my tub. I know this all sounds miserable, but it actually winds up feeling pretty invigorating. And there are a growing number of tour pros who agree.
“I really like it; I like the kick,” Nicolai Hojgaard told Golf Digest in 2025. “I like the effect also—the mental challenge of doing it. I think that's probably more about it, pushing yourself and sitting in the water. You want to get out, but you kind of tick a box by just being a bit more aware of stuff, and you're just trying to sit there as long as you can.”
Mario recommended starting with three minutes, which felt like an eternity that first time. But I stuck with it because I wanted to prove I'm serious about trying to get better at golf. And after that, my timer seemed to go off quicker and quicker and I found myself laying submerged at times for an extra minute or two. (I know you cold plunge hardos are thinking I'm soft for doing this in my bathtub, but my main goal is to lower my handicap this year, not win a cold plunge championship.) It also helped, as Mario suggested, to close your eyes and visualise playing a round of golf during that time. Make it a perfect round in your mind while you're at it. What are daydreams for?
But make sure you go all the way in
To get the most out of cold plunges, make sure you submerge your shoulders and part of your neck. This way you stimulate the vagus nerve (located at the bottom of your brainstem), a critical part of your parasympathetic nervous system, which controls things like heart rate, your immune system and digestion (some studies believe cold plunges even help boost metabolism as well by making your body work harder to burn calories in an effort to stay warm). This can also help reduce inflammation and help relieve muscle soreness, which is why cold plunges are becoming a popular part of an athlete’s recovery.
However, some studies advise not doing them right after certain types of training. According to the Mayo Clinic, “For those engaged in resistance training, cold water may turn down the molecular signaling pathways that are normally activated after exercise. This may hinder long-term improvements in strength, muscle growth and performance. However, cold-water immersion doesn't appear to negatively affect endurance training in the same way."
Personally, I’ve been doing them in the morning (I do a mobility routine from the Fit For Golf app while my bathtub fills up) and I feel like it’s helped with recovery from my strength training—something my body was not used to—as well as get me focused on the day ahead. And, yes, it's nice to get it over with.
Be safe about it
Even after doing these semi-daily for a few months, there’s a few seconds each time where I think What the heck am I doing?! But that’s a good thing. The whole point is to give your body a jolt. Well, to a point. You should check with a doctor before trying cold plunges—especially if you have any underlying heart conditions. You also shouldn’t heat up too quickly afterward by jumping into a hot shower.
Will these plunges pay off for me on the golf course? We’ll have to see, but my one round since starting them was encouraging. Playing with some buddies in a tied match on 18, I stepped up to an intimidating tee shot that always gives me problems even when there’s nothing on the line and flushed my best drive of the day. Whether it was the cold plunges or not that kept my nerves at bay, I’ll be keeping that shot in the memory bank. Maybe I’ll even think about it the next time I’m in the tub.