Underplaying a crosswind
By Golden Tee Fan • Category: Features, Playing the wind •There are many mistakes I see beginners make, but something I see more advanced players (including myself) screw up is not compensating enough for a crosswind. Let’s say you have a 6-iron into the green, where the target has you just right of the flag, and you have a 6 mph wind blowing to the left. I’d say that 8 or 9 times out of 10, the ball of the average player will come to rest left of the cup. Meaning, they didn’t play enough wind. And, I’m sure most of them never notice how consistently this happens. At first it’s hard to get a handle on how a 6 mph wind can blow a 6-iron all the way across the pin, but it does, and the sooner you understand this, the better!
Of course, if you leave the ball right of the pin in this scenario, you didn’t ever give it a chance to roll in the cup. This is true, but you can also be wasting valuable Great Shot Points!
Similarly, you’ll see beginners playing a 3-iron and a 9-iron as if wind affected them the same. One other concept you’d better learn pretty quickly is how drastically different wind affects the higher lofted clubs.
So, start taking note of whether you’re missing right or left of the cup, with all different clubs. When in doubt, err on the side of playing the wind too much, ESPECIALLY with high-lofted clubs! Rotate once or twice to offset the wind. I guarantee you’ll be surprised at the results!
Also be sure to read up on Sobe’s article here for more great information. File away in your brain the fact that an 11 mph wind blows a shot from a PW one full rotation, and for a LW, it’s 7 mph! You may just hole out a shot every couple rounds if you remember this tip!
Golden Tee Fan is a Golden Tee addict from Peoria, IL, thirsty for tips and tricks!
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Just thought I’d point something out here which may or may not be helpful. Technically speaking, the wind DOES affect all clubs the same. I know that sounds weird when you do hit clubs after different angles for the same wind. The reasoning behind hitting them at different angles is actually due to the distance of the club. Let me explain.
First off, it takes 16 clicks to completely turn your golfer 360 degrees. So, regardless of club, 1 click left or right equals 22.5 degrees. Knowing that 16 clicks would equal a circle, we have a different radius for our circle dependent on the distance of each club. For example, a 9 iron would have a radius of 100 yards, while a stock driver would have a radius of 300 yards. Now, each shot takes approximately 3.5 to 5 seconds of flight in the air - doesn’t matter if it’s a 9 iron or a driver - they are in the air for roughly the same amount of time, the balls just travel at different velocities.
If you’re still following this as I tend to ramble slightly, hopefully we’ll get somewhere. I don’t know the actual ‘real’ values for how far wind will move the ball left or right. For a wind that is directly either left or right, we’ll use an approximation of 5 feet for every 1 mph of wind. So let’s assume a value of 10 mph. For a 9 iron, this will move the ball 50 feet. Oddly enough, this will move our driver 50 feet. Hmmmm…. I know what you’re thinking - but we aim at different points. Yes, yes we do. And here’s why.
Let’s get back to our circles with corresponding radius. The 9 iron at 100 yards or 300 feet. And the driver at 300 yards or 900 feet. Knowing that the circumference of a circle is measured by the equation C=PI * radius. Calculating that out - for a 9 iron, we have a circumference of approx. 1885 feet, or 5.24 feet per degree. For a driver, on the other hand, we have a circumference of 5655 feet, or 15.71 feet per degree.
So, on the 9 iron, we would take 50 feet and divide that by 5.24 to get 9.5 degrees. This would mean that if we went 1 click left or right (22.5 degrees), we would aim slightly less than 1/5 of the distance between B and either A or C (depending on which direction the wind is coming from). For the driver, we take 50 feet and divide that by 15.71 and get 3.18 degrees. So in theory, we could aim just a little over 3 degrees off of center and the ball should fly directly into the hole (if we were exactly 300 yards out). Note that these are not exact figures and again, I do NOT know the exact distance the wind actually moves the ball in the air. Honestly, I wish I did. Hopefully what you understand at this point is that we aim at different points or degrees offline to move the ball the same 50 feet either left or right.
But there are other factors to consider as well: if the green is at a lower elevation than where you are hitting from, the ball will spend more time in the air and the wind will move it further offline. If the green is at a higher elevation, it will spend less time in the air and the ball will move slightly less offline. Also, remember that when the ball hits the green, it is traveling in a direction vector consistent with whichever vector quantity becomes greater (the speed of the golf ball vs. the force of the wind). So if the ball comes in hot with a 3 iron, the speed of the golf ball keeps the ball slightly more online than if it were to come in with a SW where it the wind will drasticly change it’s direction. Also, the slope of the green is going to affect the direction as well.
In theory, if you figure out all these factors, and could actually hit the trackball to the exact degree, you could hole every holeable shot. Unfortunately, there are things like invisileaves and trees and rocks and water and bears and bigfoot and cliffs and false fronts on greens and the fact that’s it’s almost impossible to hit the trackball to the exact degree that seem to want to prevent every shot from going in. But we can hope….or dream….or bogey.
What a great post — I’m a math major and you had me going the whole time! It’s fun to try to break it down like that, but in the end, there are always too many variables to get it perfect! Thanks for your time with that analysis!