Chronic snoring may impair your golf, researchers have found, after players handicaps improved by three strokes following treatment.

The study involved 12 golfers with severe sleep apnoea, a condition where oxygen flow is deprived during sleep, causing the sufferer to stop breathing for up to 10 seconds at a time. The condition causes heavy snoring, and tiredness during the day.

Researchers at Morristown Hospital, New Jersey, made the golfers use a CPAP machine and it was this that they attribute to their golfing improvement. The reason given was that they felt less tired, the researchers told the American College of Chest Physicians.

Daily Telegraph 02/11/09