Does a little breeze make golf easier?

[Brent Hutto]

It has always seemed to me that I play better when there's a little bit of breeze or a light wind, or maybe it's just that I'm enjoying the game more. I'm not talking about 20-gusting-30 where you have trouble standing still to putt but just your usual one-club wind.

Anyway, I was watching one of the tournaments from Austrailia recently on The Golf Channel and one of the commentators stated that as a fact. He said, paraphrasing, that the players were glad to see a little breeze come up because it makes the course play easier. Maybe he was just referring to that day's wind being from a favorable direction but he went on to make specific mention of it helping them shape their shots more readily.

I think for me a steady wind can actually make the course play effectively shorter. I hit the ball so short and crooked that most holes are "half shot" holes for me. Unless I hit an unusually good tee shot, even a 360-380 yard hole normally requires me to use a fairway wood to reach the front of the green. There are no "reachable" Par 5's under normal conditions and I have to make two good swings to even have a wedge approach on any hole over 500 yards.

So put a 12-15mph breeze in my face and those 380-yard Par 4's become Par 5's. Instead of driver, 3-wood I play them driver, 6-iron, sand wedge. Now certainly with no wind I could play it 5-wood, 7-iron, sand wedge or something but adding the requirement of a third full-swing shot isn't something to be done lightly (plus the fact that I hit my driver about as straight as my 5-wood anyway). But then a few holes later maybe I get that 12-15mph breeze behind me and can play a 380-yarder with driver, 5-iron which lets me very likely get on the green or fringe and use the putter for my third shot. It works the same way with Par 5's. Having to play a 520-yard hole driver, 5-wood, 5-wood into the wind is easily made up for by playing the next one driver, 5-wood, 9-iron when the wind is behind me.

So has anyone else noticed this effect or is it all in my head? I may be fooling myself but I think having a nice, steady, breeze actually saves me a stroke or two versus a dead calm day. Plus it's fun to judge a crosswind approach shot perfectly and watch the ball make that lovely arc into the center of the green.

[THuckaby2]

Brent:

Sorry my friend, but I'm gonna go along with Shivas.  The Scots didn't say "nae wind, na gawf" because with it the game got easier.

TH

[Brent Hutto]

OK, so I guess of the two possibilities we'll go with "more fun" rather than "easier and more fun".

Maybe it's selective memory. If I reach a downwind long Par 4 with driver, 6-iron I remember it as hitting a good shot. If I hang a slice up into a slice wind and come up 30 yards short and 30 yards left I remember it as bad luck with the wind, not my fault.

[THuckaby2]

Brent:

Now obviously selective memory has a place in golf - hell the best players remember their good shots and forget the bad - ever hear the story of Nicklaus adamantly denying that a famous missed short putt of his ever occurred?

BUT.. that doesn't make the game easier in the wind.  Shivas is right that in certain instances on certain odd courses it possibly could, but overall the effect is always going to be a net increase in difficulty. It's just another variable added to an already difficult game.

But more fun I can surely live with.  Fun ought not to be measured by score success anyway.

TH

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

From a purely personal point of view, a gentle breeze makes the game better.
I think it helps maintain concentration, and creates more shot options, which again tends to keep the mind sharp.

A gentle breeze here.....once you get above 15/20 miles an hour that changes everything , now we are having to work too hard.

[THuckaby2]

Michael:  "better"  = "more fun" but does NOT equal "easier"?

No?

So I am with you... I just can't see any sort of wind making the game easier.  And you are right on re where it becomes hard work.  Of course even that can be fun, but only if one's livelihood or self-esteem doesn't depend on the outcome.
 

TH

[Doug Siebert]

Brent,

I think all of us can relate to your example...depending on one's length, the point at which two shotters become three shotters and vice versa is different, that's all.  But this is simply an artifact of you putting too much pressure on your long game on those holes without wind, IMHO.  After all, if 380 yards is your magic distance where the wind makes things "easier", isn't a 410 yard and 350 yard hole (depending on the wind) going to became problems just like the 380 yarders?  Or is just that you have a lot of 380 yarders on your home course but nothing else in the 350-410 range -- if so watch out when Matt Ward comes through to rate it!

Wind adds uncertainty to the result of a shot, and any uncertainty makes things more difficult.  You can make your arguments, and maybe they are even true for you, and others can talk about how the wind gives them more focus -- but watch out, I'll follow that argument with my belief that I'm better from the parking lot than the center of the fairway because I don't pay much attention to the easy shots but really enjoy pulling off the hard ones!

You ever read Tommy Armour's book How to play your best golf all the time?  He relates a story of a guy who has never broken 90 who he is giving lessons to.  He makes a bet with others that the guy can break 90 if he is in total control of what club the guy uses, the shots he attempts, etc.  The guy wants to hit 3Ws at the green, Tommy hands him an 8i to lay up, stuff like that.  Guy ends up shooting a 79, and Tommy cleans up on his bet.  Now I'd be the first to argue that playing in such a Moriarty-esque way like that would squeeze the fun out of the game, at least for me, since my actual score is really of secondary concern (something I couldn't get Mucci to even comprehend in a thread a month or two back)  So while I won't suggest that you should play like that all the time, it might be worth experimenting with playing a few rounds in a super conservative "eliminate all bad outcomes" course management style just to see what happens.

[Tyler Kearns]

Brent,

Wind is definitely a pyschological element that compliments the phyical & mechanical challenges of the swing. Personally, a light breeze quartering from the right & behind me (I'm a righty), and the game seems easy. Reverse the situation, into me and over my left shoulder, and the game becomes a heck of a lot harder. I think we all have preferred wind directions for our game and for particular holes/courses - and that does make the game easier than in stagnant conditions. However, the next day always holds the posibility of a much more dreaded wind direction...it all evens out in the end.

TK

[Patrick_Mucci]

Brent,

Wind, and its increasing velocity, differentiates and identifies players according to the boundaries/limits of their ability.

Unless of course, like Doug Siebert, you don't care about score, which means you ignore the goals and principles of the game.

When it's really windy, have you tried putting from tee to green, just to keep the ball from being unduly influenced by the wind.  Doug recommends this tactic because scores of 10-30 per hole are of no consequence to him.  

[paul cowley]

....i'm with brent ....a slight steady breeze gives texture to the air and i like the feel of it and the way the ball plays ,even downwind ....it gives me something to play the ball against or a little boost if needed and i think i enjoy a shot more because of it.

but then again , i at times enjoy the sultry ,cozy feeling of the air when its 90 degrees with 100% humidity that others consider sweltering......and i'm known for not coming in from the rain......go figure

[Brent Hutto]

Doug,

Ever since starting this thread yesterday something like what you say has been on my mind. It's a cliche to talk about playing in bad conditions and shooting 90 one day then going back 24 hour later in perfect conditions and shooting 102 on the same course. Some of that is just a hacker's fundamental inconsistency. But I'm starting to suspect for me it goes a lot deeper than that. If I really do have a pattern of playing well on windy and/or rainy days (and I'm pretty sure it's true) that says something about how I think or act when conditions are good. In other words, ask not why I can shoot a 90 on a day when the weather should be adding a couple strokes a side to my score. Ask why I shoot 102 on a day with no excuses.

The super-conservative game plan route has always been a mixed bag for me. It definitely doesn't work to take it to an extreme and play Par 4's with three 7-irons or whatever. My full swing is just as likely to cold top a 7-iron or a 5-wood from the fairway or a driver off the tee. However, I've played some very good rounds (including the year I missed winning RSG-Ohio by a single stroke) with a moderately conservative plan:

1) hit nothing longer than a 6-iron from the fairway,

2) use driver only on totally wide-open holes with absolutely no trouble to the slice side, otherwise tee off with a 4-iron,

3) lay up to good wedge distances and then play even the wedge shots to the center of the green (boy, that's hard to do looking at a front hole location and only being 70 yards away), and

4) chip out to the center of the fairway if there is any tree even close to the line between me and the green.

I'll tell you what the biggest challenge to doing this is for me. If I try to reach the green with a fairway wood and hit a bad shot, I shrug it off thinking "Hey, that was a tough shot". If I try to lay up by hitting a 7-iron to my good wedge distance and then I slice or top that shot into trouble I have a tendency to get so mad it takes me three or four holes to calm down again. God help me, my thought in those situations is "OK, you settled for the chickenshit shot and couldn't even pull that off, now that's pathetic". I know that sounds pretty lame but we all have our crosses to bear.

Definitely something to think about in all this...

Tyler,

It's true that my original framing of the question without reference to good and bad directions (for a given hole or course) was too simplistic. Very few courses that I play are so symmetrical that the wind that can come from any old direction and sort of average out. At my home course for instance there are a couple of wind directions that tend to interact with ridge lines in the terrain to be just plain hard overall with no compensating "at least we're downwind now" at any point during the round.

[Brent Hutto]

...i at times enjoy the sultry ,cozy feeling of the air when its 90 degrees with 100% humidity that others consider sweltering......and i'm known for not coming in from the rain......go figure

I'm afraid I can't find anything to like about 90 degrees. For a lifelong southerner I just hate hot and sticky.

But I do like playing golf in the rain. In fact, as much as I prefer playing with other people to playing alone my very favorite rounds of golf are when it's raining enough that everyone else stays home and I have the course to myself. There's something about the way the rain isolates you down to just a little bubble of maybe 150 yards radius and you have all your little rituals of wiping off your hands before each shot and swinging real easy to make good contact and staying snug and dry inside your rain suit. Plus it makes me speed up my preshot routine instead of fiddling around before hitting the ball, nothing like a little river forming down your neck and back to remind you to hurry up. A nice, steady rain plus about a one-club breeze is perfect golf weather at least for the three or four hours it takes for your shoes to start leaking and your last dry towel to get soaked. Then it's time for a hot meal and hotter shower, which is also a great part of the experience.

[Doug Siebert]

Unless of course, like Doug Siebert, you don't care about score, which means you ignore the goals and principles of the game.

Do you think that the shepards who first invented the game were counting strokes from the start or were they saying, "betcha I can hit this rock from here into that gorse bush over the next dune".  Its you score & pencil guys who have lost your way!

When it's really windy, have you tried putting from tee to green, just to keep the ball from being unduly influenced by the wind.  Doug recommends this tactic because scores of 10-30 per hole are of no consequence to him.  

Now you are being silly.  Scores of 10-30 per hole would definitely be of consequence to me, because there's only room for one digit per hole on a scorecard!