WHOOP Podcast - Pro Golfer Nick Watney shares how WHOOP warned him of COVID-19

Episode Date: June 27, 2020

Pro golfer Nick Watney, the first player on the PGA Tour to be diagnosed with COVID-19, details how his WHOOP data led him to getting tested for the virus. Watney shares how he became alarmed by a sudden rise in his respiratory rate and how he experienced no other symptoms that would have alerted him to the presence of the virus. Nick discusses his current health (3:28), his significant respiratory rate spike (6:05), why he was immediately concerned (7:21), testing positive (9:59), his quick action to protect those around him (11:00), the impact of WHOOP (12:15), the PGA's procurement of 1,000 WHOOP straps for players, caddies, and tournament staff (13:30), sharing his story to help others (15:52), what he has learned from WHOOP (21:31), and a detailed rundown of the hours and days leading up to his positive test (22:25).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, folks. Welcome to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, the founder and CEO of WOOP, and we are on a mission to unlock human performance. We build wearable technology that measures sleep and recovery and strain. And more recently, and most importantly, it appears, respiratory rate, which is a very important metric that we're going to talk more about on this podcast. If you are unfamiliar with WOOP and want to check out our product. You can join the WOOP membership for 15% off using code Will Ahmed. That's WI.L.L.A.H. M.E. D. Okay. Our guest today is Nick Watney. Nick Watney is a professional golfer on the PGA tour and has been in the news a lot recently because he was the first professional golfer to test positive for COVID-19.

And this is close to home because Nick Watney is a whoop member. He's been a whoop member for close to a year now and monitors his whoop statistics daily. And it turns out that Nick Watney was able to identify that he may have COVID-19 from looking at his whoop data. We go into great detail talking about that experience he had. Frankly, it's a little surreal talking to him about it for us because it's so wild. Here's a professional golfer who literally is at the tour. tournament. He tests negative on a Tuesday. And then on Thursday, he wakes up with a 1% recovery. His body's run down. He feels no symptoms. He plays his round. The next day, he sees on his whoop data,

a huge jump from 14 to 18 on his respiratory rate. And that causes him to say, hey, I should get tested for COVID-19. He goes in. It gets tested. Test positive. He's able to quarantine. And he ends up protecting the tour because otherwise he would have been playing all weekend. So we talked to Nick about that experience, what it's been like having COVID-19 for the last week. He talks a little bit about his whoop data and super grateful for Dick sharing this story with us. And in case you miss the news, the PGA tour procured over a thousand whoop straps for every PGA tour player, media member, caddy, staff, essential worker, you name it. Everyone is now on whoop.

I've been here at the Travelers Championship for the past four days, helping on board everyone, and we have to commend the PGA Tour. They heard about this story with Nick Watney. They were aware that a high percentage of PGA Tour players already wore whoop, and they're trying to create the safest environment for playing golf and in a world of COVID-19. I've been here. The safety measures have been impressive, frankly.

I think they're doing a phenomenal job, and we're here to help. We're here to play a role. I think WOOP can be part of the solution. We're certainly not the whole solution, but we are doing our very best to contribute in this moment. And without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Nick so you can hear his story. Nick, welcome to the WOOP podcast. Thank you.

Thanks for having me. It's been a wild week for both of us, I think maybe more so you. How are you feeling, first of all? Let's start there. I feel fine. Thank you. Apparently I got a pretty mild strain or the effects have been mild. So that's good, I guess.

And then also just really want to mitigate any risk I am towards anybody else. But I feel fine. It's amazing, man. You know, the way that you behaved so responsive. and, you know, potentially saved a number of players on the tour and other members of the PGA Tour bubble from getting infected with this virus. So let's go back to last week, walk through, for me, the experience that you had of ultimately discovering that you had COVID-19.

I flew into, we played at Hilton Head last week, and I flew in there on Tuesday morning. Went straight to the testing facility, which was off-site, got the test, got the test administered, and waited. It's usually about a couple hours, so waited a couple hours for the results. It's kind of like the guideline state you can go to the golf course, but they don't want you to go inside and all that all those things. That's their guidelines. So waited at where I was staying, kind of checked in there, got settled, got a not detected message back. So I went out and practiced as I normally would, Tuesday, Wednesday.

And then Thursday, I had a very early tea time, 6.56. So I wake up three hours before my time just to kind of do a warm up and get going, get my body awake. So I had a 3.50 wake-up call, which is not normal, I would say, or I don't normally wake up in the threes very often. So play that day and practiced afterwards and got back to the room and thought, man, I'm a little bit tired, but that should be normal for a 350 wake up. You woke up really early. And so just to be clear, right, we're talking about Thursday, the 18th. You play the first round of the tournament. Yeah, that's right.

Okay. And also as some context, you've been on whoop for how long? Since last July. So almost a year, I've learned a lot as I think a lot of. users do just on you know how you operate the best and such like that well you you learned a little extra something than than most users so to talk talk about waking up on on friday and and what that was like for you Friday woke up and felt better felt better than I did Thursday afternoon you know I was a bit sluggish Thursday and again I thought it was just because I had woken up so early but

woke up feeling okay and checked the data and my respiratory rate had gone up from I'm usually in the low 14s to 18s, the low 18s. Isn't that amazing? It was. You shared your data with us for this and I'm looking at it. And it's like you're under 14 or right around 14 every day. for almost a year. I mean, it barely moves.

And then all of a sudden, you're above 18. And it turns out you had done some research on respiratory rate and you had read some of the things that we put out about it. Is that correct? Exactly. Yeah. So I look forward to the emails and the podcasts just to keep learning. You know, what's the best, how to get the best recovery, how to, you know, whether my

diet switches different things or or make small adjustments here or there and how it affects and to see that I took a screenshot of it sent it to my wife and said before I'd gone in and said this is very alarming just because I'd read your you guys email and when you guys had analyzed data from people who had come down with with COVID and then were you whoop users it was kind of something that jumped out, just being raised respiratory rake seems pretty consistent with a pretty consistent tail-tale sign in something that's very, there's not much concrete elsewhere, to be honest, as much as I've been diving in and looking at things, it's very difficult. Everything's very vague right now. Obviously, I think we have our best doctors in such

trying, but this seems to be kind of something that can really be preventative, hopefully for from the spread. Like everyone, we're trying to figure this virus out too. And, you know, a lot of a lot of whoop is founded on science and research and validation and trying to uncover insights about the human body. And so in early March, we added COVID-19 tracking as you're aware. And that allowed us to build a meaningful data set on what COVID-19 looked like before, during, and after through the lens of whoop data. And that's where we started to see a consistent path. with respiratory rate. And you're referring to some of the podcasts and emails that we put out about elevated respiratory rate. And look, I mean, I'm glad we put that out because you jumped

from a 14 to over an 18 and you knew something's up. So what do you do from there? Because it was a Friday. So I don't think you even were supposed to get tested. Right. So I've stayed with my caddy last week. And thank God he's not. He's been negative. He's been tested. He's been tested multiple times since and he's come back negative so that's great good to hear that yeah we uh we contacted the tour and said uh you know something just maybe i could clear up some things but i there's been reports that i was symptomatic and i i wasn't really symptomatic besides this move data i mean i they took they put me through a thermal scanner and also took my temperature with thermometer both were normal um no cough no uh shortness of like

My respiratory rate was up, but I didn't wake up panting or anything or I wouldn't have known if I didn't, hadn't seen the data. So went into the nurse, she kind of went through the checklist of, are you shortness, you have shortness of breath? Are you a fever? No, do you have a cough? No. Administered the test, and then I spoke with the tour doc. And he said, given that you tested negative Tuesday, you don't have these symptoms kind of flashing red. So to speak, you can go warm up because if you don't have it, would you like to play?

And I said, I mean, of course I'd like to play. That's why I'm here. This is what I do. I want to play if I can, you know, since I don't have a fever and all these things. So went to the golf course social distance while warming up and got a call about 20 minutes before that said, your test came back probably. You need to go. You need to leave as soon as you can. and I kind of said to the doctor like is this is this real I can't I mean I know that

I saw the data but is this he said yeah this is real you need to go so I left as soon as I could must have been a scary moment for you too because you're on the site and you're realizing wow I might be contagious I got to get out of here correct it was very scary it switched at that time especially because I wasn't feeling badly it's it switched to let's stay as far away from people as I can because it seems like this thing can spread so quickly that I just wanted to just wanted to get out of there and I have a great deal of respect for my peers. I mean, we're, I've been out there for a long time and I mean, we're all away from our families and going different places every week and you see the same guys

almost every tournament. So totally, I definitely wanted to, I just, think it's the right thing to do to protect people if you can. And so I need to get out of there right away. And the math is looking good as far as the people I was in contact with. Not that I was physically in contact with them, but being close to them. Like the tracing is looking better and better every day that there was no spread via myself. Look, you did an amazing job, man. I mean, you really did because, again, you took the initiative to say, hey, something might be up here. I want to get tested again. And, I mean, if you hadn't done that, it's just unbelievable to think.

You know, you could have played the whole weekend. It really is amazing. I mean, people have asked me if you had no symptoms, why did you get tested? I mean, I have to say it's because of the loop data. I mean, when I first checked it, there's so little change when the respiratory rate became available to see daily, there was still a little change that I kind of thought, well, well, that's, I mean, that's cool, I guess, but I don't really understand why it's on there. And then to see the spike like that. So you mean, you're like, why is whoop even showing

me respiratory rate? This is so boring, which is funny, because that's actually why it was never in the Woop app. Because I love to say to my team, the more data we collect, the less we should show to a user. If it's not interesting, we shouldn't show it to a user. And all of a sudden, keeping this one statistic boring has become very interesting. You don't want this thing to change. And so, anyway, I hope we can laugh a little bit about this. But it is, it's really amazing the initiative that you took, Nick. And I've been at the travelers for the past four days. And I know that people are very appreciative of just the way you handled the whole situation. And I've, I've also gotten to speak with the tour. And I know that they've, you know, they learned a lot

from your experience, which is why WOOP is now being distributed to literally everyone here. I mean, where baddies, media, broadcast, staff, essential workers. Like, we're rolling it out everywhere. I think it's super cool. And I'm pretty sure that I've heard you guys talk about. But with Kristen, she's talking about in one of her, the science of winning was talking about data as power, you know, data being able to collect it and analyze it

and then that's how you improve. And I think it's great for the tour to do that. Obviously, to mitigate risk is first and foremost at this point, but also people can really learn a lot on the back end. Hopefully,

you know, we can get this figured out sooner or other than later. But it's still obviously very beneficial. When you talk to the tour and you said, yeah, you know, I wear this thing called a whoop and it told me I had an elevated respiratory rate, where they're like, wait, what are you talking about? Yes, they did. They kind of like, I mean, I have to say it's, it had a bit of a foothold already.

Well, that's true. I mean, of course, I mean, you know, we've onboarded all the players this week. And to be fair, about 60% of the players already were wearing. wearing whoop. So whoop has been well known on tour. I just think I imagine that hearing the story of, you know, you identifying that you might have COVID-19 from a wearables is sort of this fascinating surprise. Yeah, definitely. And obviously there's a unique name. The whoop is a unique name and people were more than one are kind of saying like, wait, what? What do you, what? Sergio Garcia had a funny soundbite, I think, for ESPN, where he was like, yeah, it was this thing called the whoop.

And it's like a COVID-19 tracker. I was like, well, that's not quite the case. But we have been able to identify respiratory rate as an important metric. I've gotten multiple calls from friends not associated with the tour who've gotten it and their friends have gotten it. And I think it's incredible. I think, you know, my wife kind of, when we've been talking about this multiple times, but is there a silver lining as this? What can we, can something good come out of this?

Because, like, as you said, it was a bit scary. And if people can learn more and this helps anybody else, then I guess that's a good thing, obviously. Well, look, it was validating for us to see your story because it proved to us that this research that we were doing is very real. And it also shows, I think, the importance right now of measuring respiratory rate. Everyone's trying to figure out what are things that we can do to prevent the spread of COVID-19 or identify it earlier. The difference between figuring out when you're pre-symptomatic versus three-day symptomatic. And keep in mind, some people are asymptomatic. They never get symptoms, which it sounds like is somewhat closer to your experience.

Right. And what's fascinating, again, just looking at some of the whoop data that you shared with us is ever since Thursday, I mean, you went from having like a 1% recovery, you know, you're 50%, you're in the red again, you know, 20%, 20%, it's, your body's clearly fighting something, you know, and your strain is way down. Normally when an athlete or an individual goes from having high strain every day to taking completely strain off their body, you may actually see a recovery jump because it's a sign that your body's rested and you're experiencing the opposite of that. You've taken a lot of strain off your body and yet your body is still run down. And so even though you don't feel symptoms, it's amazing to see that the data is reflecting that your body's fighting something.

And look, it goes back to a lot of the thesis for why Whoop exists, which is to understand the human body and the bottom line is feelings can be overrated. You know, there's secrets that your body's trying to tell you that you can't feel. And that's, you know, so it's a bit surreal for us, honestly. We get the call Saturday night and it's like we need to put Whoop on every player on the PGA tour and every person and try to help, you know, prevent the spread of COVID-19. It's a little surreal, frankly, that we can play a role in this moment. Yeah, I imagine so. You know, as we said, it's weird that, or not weird, maybe weird is the wrong word, but I imagine anyway that loop was created to identify trends and ways that people could improve athletically,

maybe first or formal, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but gather this data for athletes and then also for other people who are curious, obviously. now this turn that we've had in the world, it maybe hasn't happened for a really long time or maybe ever in terms of like a global pandemic, your device has turned into something even more than what you set out to. So yeah, I can't even imagine where you guys are that. And that's got to be a pretty cool thing. Well, look, you know, the company's mission is to improve human performance. And I think it's our responsibility to try to identify things around health and performance to go with that. And, you know, if everyone's scared of a virus that's floating around

the world, it's our responsibility to do research on that. And we didn't know whether we were going to find anything this obvious. I mean, we've always seen that when people get sick on whoop, things happen to their bodies, right? If you have a flu or a general cold, you know, in COVID-19, and you've seen this, your resting heart rate goes up, your heart rate variability goes down, your sleep quality can be disturbed, you'll get red recoveries on whoop, like, you know, you've gotten a bunch of red recoveries here recently. But what's interesting is that those are nonspecific. They're nonspecific indicators, meaning we don't know if you have the general cold or the flu or fill in the blank virus, right? Right. What's so powerful

about respiratory rate, Nick, is that it's specific to COVID-19. This reading seems to be specific to COVID-19. So all those other non-specific indicators also are true, but we see with COVID-19 this elevated respiratory rate. And we're not seeing that for people on WOOP who report being sick. Okay. So if you report being sick on WOOP, again, all those other things changed that I just described. Increased resting heart rate, decreased heart rate variability, sleep quality disrupted. But your respiratory rate stays flat. And you can probably find this in your data. If you go back in the last nine months or something and maybe you had a little bit of a cold or a sniffle, like you'll see that your respiratory rate was still probably at 14. Whereas COVID-19, it just jumps off the page the way

yours did. And that's quite powerful. I mean, that's a sign that this is one tool. Again, We don't want to overstate our claims here, but this is just one tool, one piece of the puzzle that can help, you know, help identify this virus. And the people that I've spoke to about it, especially, obviously it's ramped up since all this has kind of happened. But my friends who have been asking about it or people associated with the tour or whatever, I've been saying one thing that in almost a year, call it 11 months that I've been wearing it, you can't really fool it. I mean, you know, whether my kids had a rough night and I slept, you know, four and a half hour or something. I don't get a lot of green when that happens, green recoveries. There hasn't been many days when it gives me 90 and I feel run down or something.

It's like an all-telling thing in certain ways, obviously not to overstate, but it's tough to fool this little thing. We appreciate that, Nick. We work hard to make sure that you can't fool. the whoop. There's a whole data science and research team and a real brilliant team that's working on making that a case. What are you saying to your friends when they ask you about the whoop and how it helped you identify those? I basically given the timeline. Played Thursday, had a very early wake up, felt a bit tired of run down that afternoon, but didn't think too much of it because

I woke up so early. And as far as the virus goes, I tested negative two. days before. So I didn't really pay much mind to that. And then when I woke up Friday and saw the respiratory rate data, it set off an alarm just because of, I read the emails saying exactly that. And it says in the app, it says, don't expect much change. A significant increase could be, what's the language? Could be significant. It could be meaningful. Yeah. it would be meaningful. So that is, I mean, it's really scary to say, but that is literally the reason why I did it because I didn't feel badly like in terms of anything. I run down or I didn't feel very run down. I didn't feel hot. I didn't cough. I didn't shorten us a breath. None of that. So that's the reason why I got another test. And look, I mean, you took a very responsible action because while this virus may not be scary for you inside you or it's not giving you the same negative effects, you could easily spread it to someone and that person could have a fatal result. And so that's what's so scary about this virus is the idea that for one person, it's like it's not even there. Maybe it's screwing with your whoop data, but it's not even there. And for another person, it can make you ethely ill. So that's why, you know, anyway, that's why we're committed to doing research on this.

We think that humanity should just come together to beat this virus. Yes, sir. I agree. And it seems like you guys have found this trait that people exhibit when they have it. That is something, you know, if you look at the, I don't know who put the, put the list together, but the list of of symptoms, it's so sporadic from person to person that if there's one common thing that you guys seem to have found, I think it's important to be able to monitor it. So great job, Woop. Well, thank you, Nick. And look, we're fortunate to have you on Woop. And we're grateful for you, one, you know, being willing to share this information with us and the public at large and share your story. And we hope that you just continue, you continue, you continue.

you're getting better and you know hopefully you'll be back out on on the tour not too long yeah i really hope so um i'd love to um make news not for being the first golfer to get this uh it's been i don't know that's not really what i want to be known for so uh i would love to get back out and play obviously when when it's uh when it's safe but um i'm looking forward to it well look i know you want to be making headlines for winning tournaments and not getting sick, but I will say that I think the way that you handled yourself doing this whole thing and sort of the level of responsibility that you took and now being able to educate people on it, I do think you're making a big difference whether you realize it or not. So thank you for that. That's nice you say. Thank you.

Thank you to Nick for coming on the Whoop podcast. We're wishing him a speedy recovery and hopefully he'll be back out on tour soon. You can find us on social media at Whoop at Will Ahmed. We love to hear feedback on the Whoop podcast. And again, a reminder, you can get 15% off a Whoop membership with code Will Ahmed. Thanks for listening over and out from the Travelers Championship. Stay in the green, folks. Thank you.