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so , a lot of you guys pay in windy states...tell me: if i hit a Straight shot ( no fading or drawing to take advantage of the wind) : will the distance it carries be affected.. .


second question , how much distance do you think is given up just based on cold temps...say around 30 -40 degrees...
thanks

I played in wind this morning...it all depends on how strong and from what direction it comes from...the advice that I would give in general is to swing easy and club up one...this will keep the ball down a little and put less spin on the ball helping with accuracy...temps like what you are talking about should take about 1/2 to 1 club off your distances...I forget the ratio, but it was low enought that my normal day to day variance in distance pretty much made the effect moot...pay attention to your first few shots...if you hit them well were they shorter or longer than expected? Adjust from that point on...

Playing in the wind is more experience than calculation. And like Bump says, pay attention to your first few shots, then gauge the rest of your game from that. For one thing you will rarely have a pure crosswind.... it will almost always be helping or hurting, at least slightly, so once again, just play in the wind when you can and learn how your shots react to it. As a general rule, in windy conditions a draw is better than a fade, and a low shot is better than a high one. But there are exceptions to those generalities.

the temperature usually forces you to hit one club more i have found.As for the wind its hard to explain you get a feel for it as the round progresses.

I live in TX and two things we have a lot of is wind and hard pan. The best way to defeat both is to learn to hit the low stinger by playing the ball back in your stance about an inch, keep the lead wrist bowed, and hit down. To me it feels like I am trying to smash the ball into the ground. I only use a ¾ swing. The result is a low very hot ball that goes much further than a normal shot. The only problem is the approach shot from the low angle it runs like a scalded dog.

In theory, the momentum in perpendicular directions will be independent. That is, if you are hitting a ball straight downrange and there is a crosswind at exactly the perpendicular left to right or right to left, the drag from the perpendicular direction will only move the ball left or right, and should not change the momentum in any other direction. It does depend on what you mean by "total distance" because the distance downrange will be exactly the same, but because the ball moved side to side, there will be more "straight line" distance between where the ball started and stopped.

It is the difference between moving along the side of a triangle or the hypotenuse.

B________C
|............../
|............/
|........../
|......../
|....../
|..../
|../
|/
A

The downrange distance is from A to B, and that shouldn't change no matter how much crosswind there is. But, with a left-to-right cross wind, the ball will travel from A to C. And A to C is equal to or greater than A to B, based on a simple mathematic property. It should be noted that if the wind is constant, the ball will not travel on a straight diagonal line, it will curve very similarly to a drawn or faded shot.

All that said, the point above about how rare pure cross winds exist is pertinent. It would be exceptionally rare circumstances that there isn't some upwind or downwind component to a shot, as well as some vertical component to the wind. So, it's always going to require practice/experience. On the calculation side of things, it is important to know that drag is in the neighborhood of a velocity squared order of magnitude. That means, that the drag increases as the velocity difference between the ball and the wind squared. It's not exactly a squared phenomena because of the nonlinear nature of the turbulent fluid mechanics, but, it is not linear in the typical range of golf ball speeds. In short, hitting into a wind costs you much more than you can get from hitting with a wind. If I remember correctly, a drive that normally carried 250 yards loses 14 yards into a 10 mph wind, but only gains 6 yards with a 10 mph tailwind.

thanks for the advice... I had a pure crosswind left to right at 20 mph at my range that day , so kind of got me thinking about the physics of this...why a pure crosswind would impede my forward distance!........................( and i don't know about you guys but that avatar really creeps me out! )

Yowser! the hitting along the hypotenuse is probably what i was detecting ...makes sense . i had to wonder tho if a pure side wind destroys some of the ball's spin mechanics .....thereby affecting distance ....

If a ball is hit with only backspin (that is, no slice or hook spin at all), a cross wind would probably only have a tiny, tiny effect on the spin. The cross wind would have to have a large enough gradient over the diameter of the ball to spin the ball. That is, the cross wind at the top of the ball would have to be significantly stronger or weaker than the cross wind at the bottom of the ball to induce any additional lift in the ball. (Coincidently, this is the other way an object can experience lift. An object can spin and experience spin lift a.k.a. Magnus force, or it can experience a gradient and experience shear lift.) Now, wind will be full of gradients, but the turbulent nature of the flow basically ensures that the gradients in the wind are essentially random. So, while I am sure that the lift from the backspin isn't exactly the same as on a calm day, I doubt it will be changed by more than a percent or two.

Now, if there is sidespin, the crosswind can play with that. It can exacerbate or ameliorate a slice/hook. Just like a headwind or tailwind can affect the distance of a drive. A cross wind that is in the same direction as a slice/hook will make it much worse than before, and a wind in the opposite direction will reduce it somewhat. Though, again, just like my example of the head/tail wind above, the same speed crosswind with the slice/hook will make the slice/hook much worse than the same speed crosswind opposite the slice/hook with damper the slice/hook.

...why working the ball into the wind is a good idea on a day with crosswinds...

Best tip I have ever received came from an Ex European tour Winner: Never fight the wind

Crosswinds will affect the distance of a straight shot due to friction, and I find very cold weather causes a loss of at least a club.

I disagree 100% with that idea. What you're saying, in essence, is that a crosswind actually increases your total shot distance. The only way to increase the total shot distance is to put more energy behind the projectile.

Yeah, Martini, there is more energy, the wind energy that moves it side to side. The drag force is the wind giving up momentum and the ball gaining momentum.

Again, you have to be careful what you mean by "total distance" Do you mean downrange distance? Then, you are right, a crosswind won't put any more downrange momentum behind the ball, and your downrange distance will be the same.

But, if by "total distance" you mean if I walk in a straight line from where the ball started to where it landed, then that distance on a blown ball has to be longer or at the very least equal. Again, because the hypotenuse of a triangle is at least as long as either of the two sides.

The downrange straight ahead momentum is the same in both cases. Like I said, for a pure cross-wind, the downrange momentum will be completely independent and unaffected by a pure cross-wind. But, the cross-wind will push the ball off-line, and you get more total distance. It is exactly the same as when you hit a ball off-line but still end up "pin high"... sort of, because if you had aimed to hit the ball in a straight line between the fairway and the flag, ending up to the left or right is more distance. Again, the triangle inequality. Depending on how left or right -- but still pin high -- you are, had you hit that same shot dead at the pin there is a good chance you'd actually have been over the green.

How much does this affect your game? Probably not too much at all. It takes a pretty strong wind for it to matter.

Here's the really confusing part, you actually need to hit a slightly longer shot if you want to land on the green.

wind
--------->

T-----------G
\...............|
..\.............|
....\.......... |
......\.........|
........\.......|
..........\.....|
............\...|
..............\.|
...............B

In this case, the wind is blowing left-to-right, and in order for the ball to end up on the green (G), you will have to hit a shot at T (for target). The distance B-T is longer than B-G, so you may have to club up -- it will depend on how strong the wind is. In this case, the cross-wind will actually take a some momentum away from the ball. There is a component of the original momentum that is opposite of the direction of the wind, so they will cancel each other out. Net result, you have to hit a longer shot to end up a shorter distance away.

Oops, I think Bignose got you on that one.
As to the original post I find side wind doesn't effect my distances if I have good clean contact. Like Bignose stated though a slice or hook can be effected greatly depending on the wind velocity.

I think I'm getting a headache.....