Entry 25.49

Alright, I think we’ve officially hit that time of year here in Fayetteville, NC. And it came almost as quick as you can flip a light switch. Cold. We had two pretty hard frosts and for my parents and friends up north you’re probably rolling your eyes right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. You’ve been having frosty mornings and freezing temperatures and maybe even some snow. But here’s the key. I’m not in New Hampshire. I’m not in the north. So unglue your pupils from the ceiling and bear with me. I don’t mind a brisk morning but by afternoon, I want prime golfing weather. Now, the weather has been a good thing for me since I’ve been working on developing this piece of software. It’s been nice to not have the golf course calling my name. But I’m a golfer first and software engineer second. Well actually not second. It’s waaaayyyy down the list. But it’s happening and I can’t make it stop. It’s the curse of my “almost” OCD (I’m one answer change away from being diagnosed). My OCD doesn’t have to do with being clean though. It has to do with the job being done right. Could I leave my program where it is and call it good? Yup. Is the job done right? Nope. So I can’t stop. I’ve been burning the midnight oil on this thing. Well I actually haven’t see midnight yet but I have seen 10pm and for me that’s close enough to midnight. This last week I did a playing lesson with one of my students and two major observations came out of that lesson. First, for the first time in his life, he felt like he was playing golf and not golf swing and had no idea what he was doing. For a kid who shoots in the seventies on the regular that’s stunning. But tells you how far you can get playing golf swing. Two, the weather impacts the game more than you think.

We all read the articles about how when it gets cold, you can’t hit the ball as far as you could when it was warm. We blame it on wearing layers and the golf ball not being as bouncy (don’t criticize my lack of scientific terms, just wait). But how far do we go to truly understand how much the weather impacts the game? Not your swing. Not your equipment. The game. What makes golf a game? I’d be interested to hear your answers. Maybe your answer is “there’s a goal and achieving that goal makes you a winner”. Or maybe it’s as simple as “something you do that has winners and losers”. A quick Google search of “What makes a game, a game?” gives the answer “an activity with rules, goals, and a defined outcome” that most of you would probably give. But it’s the second half of the definition that really defines the game: “engaging players in a system of challenges, choices, and interaction”. And therein is how the weather changes the game. The challenges change i.e. you’re bundled up like an Eskimo when it’s 40 degrees out, the ball is no longer as “bouncy” (I’m going to keep using it, get over it), your hands get a different kind of feedback when you thin a shot or find “el hosel”, and the ground can be firmer (although that’s not the case here right now because it’s chosen to be both cold and rainy). When the challenges change, your choices must change. That’s what my player found out. Because of the change in weather, he had to change how he made choices. He’d never had to do that before because he wasn’t playing the game, he was playing golf swing. I think his exact words were “I’ve never had to think about it before”. I love hearing those words. Because it means a player is making a transition. Because it means the player is opening up and asking for help. That’s when I get to step in.

Now I’m not a meteorologist. I never have been. Never will be. One of the members at Highland can attest to that. When it’s summertime here in North Carolina we are prone to pop up thunderstorms. So one day a member came in and asked me what I thought about the weather. I checked my favorite weather app and told him he was good. He looked like a drowned rat when he came in off number 2. The next day he was back with the same question. Again, I checked and said he looked good. And again, he came back looking like he just hopped in the pool. Why on earth that man thought asking me a third day in a row what I thought about the weather, I’ll never know. But he did. And this time, I told him I was wrong the last two days and I think today it’s going to rain. It became one of the sunniest afternoons we had. When he came in the next day, he didn’t ask about the weather. He simply said “I’m never going to trust you for weather advice again.” Now early in my golf career my heart would’ve sunk. But I was far enough in that those words made my heart sing! Now while I’m not a meteorologist, I do know a fair bit about weather. Not all the big picture stuff with weather models and such. The little things that matter here and now. I can tell when weather is moving in. I know how to watch major weather patterns to plan what to wear, what to pack and what to leave home. I’m not always right, but then the professionals who do it for a living aren’t either. But I dive a little deeper into the here and now weather. Let me explain. In a previous profession of mine, the weather meant everything. Being a sniper is so much more than shooting, but when it comes down to the shooting part knowing the nitty gritty details about weather is important. Let’s break it down into two categories: elevation and windage. Now before you start wondering why I’m talking about shooting and not golf, I’m not. I’m talking about projectiles. That’s all the golf ball really is. A projectile. We won’t talk about ballistics because, while even though the word ball is in it, by definition, ballistics has to do with firearms. We may venture into it a little when we talk about the bounciness of the ball, but more than likely not. Let’s start with elevation.

When most people think about elevation, they think about altitude. But when it comes to elevation, that’s only a part of the story. I was on the range the other day when a couple of the kids had the Trackman turned up to twelve thousand feet of altitude and were surprised that the ball didn’t carry as far as they thought it would. I made what I saw as a simple comment that altitude doesn’t matter, density altitude does. I got the “huh, what?” expression from a couple of kids and one asked what it was. I gave him a very simplified version and I’ll give you a similar version with a few more details. Density altitude is a calculation that pilots use. I can’t tell you what all they use it for, but my guess is it factors into lift and engine performance. Aircraft need both and you don’t want to be lacking on either, especially mid-air. So, what factors into density altitude? Here’s the formula: DA = PA + [120 * (OAT-ISA)]. I told you we would be getting more scientific. So DA is Density Altitude, PA is Pressure Altitude, OAT is Outside Air Temperature, and ISA is the International Standard Atmosphere Temperature. So we see Pressure Altitude which simplified is the idea that at higher elevations, air is “thinner” than at sea level. And then we see temperature which the idea being that the warmer it is, the “thinner” the air is. What you don’t see is humidity which does play a factor. And while people say that the air is “thick” when its humid out, they are wrong. Because if we dive into the atomic level of things, monohydrogen dioxide compounds have less mass than dioxide molecules. Moist air is actually thinner. The simplest way to think about it is Altitude up? Air is thinner. Outside Air Temperature is up? Air is thinner. Humidity is up? Air is thinner. For planes and helicopters, that’s a bad thing. That means less air resistance and therefore less lift. For a golf ball? It depends. If you are a high spin player, higher density altitude means the dimples on your golf ball have less to grab onto and so the ball will fly further. If you are a low spin player, that could actually be a bad thing. Spin is a necessary part of lift (projectile stabilization etc) so not enough spin and not “enough” air to create lift and your ball tumbles out of the sky prematurely. So back to playing the game. How does weather affect the golf ball? A lower density altitude means the air is thicker so the ball has more resistance on it so it doesn’t fly as far. Cue the Bernoulli/Magnus effect. The dimples on the ball create turbulence ad allow air to “stick” to the golf ball so the rest of the air molecules it runs into slide off easier. But the number of air molecules it runs into still creates resistance. So if the air is thicker, it is running into more air molecules and the ball flies shorter. Now you as the player need to make a decision on how you are going to get your ball to fly the correct distance. It comes down to two things. Experience and judgment. We had simple on the fly adjustments in our heads when I was a sniper. You don’t have time to sit down and do the calculations. You have to let your experience and judgment tell you in less than the blink of an eye how much hold over you need for the distance you are trying to hit. The rule of thumb in golf that I’ve seen is for every 10 degrees below the temperature you got your stock yardages at, add 2 yards. So if you got your stock yardages at a balmy 70 degrees and it’s 40 degrees out, you need to add 6 yards. I don’t think that estimation takes into account the bounciness of the ball, which is where I will talk about ballistics for a second on a very basic level. Gunpowder burns at different rates at different temperatures. I experimented with my ammo, freezing some and then heating some up, and seeing what the temperature differences did to the holdovers. Only reason I own a laser thermometer. The rate of powder burn is the equivalent of the bounciness of the ball. The ball is synthetic rubber on the inside and that rubber becomes stiff and brittle when it gets cold, making its ability to stretch and snap back diminished. Less deformation (it’s not compression, rubber doesn’t compress. We like that word in golf but we use it incorrectly) means less energy transfer. Less energy transfer means the ball doesn’t fly as far. Maybe this winter I will adapt my ballistics testing for golf balls and see if we can’t come up with a rule for that too. For now, just play a different ball each hole, keeping the other one in your pocket with your hand warmer. That’ll keep the ball temperature up and the rubber bouncy.

Windage is exactly what it sounds like. Wind. How far left and right do you have to account for with your shots. Again, another place where my prior occupation made me pretty good. You hear people talking about wind on TV broadcasts all the time. “It’s a quartering wind off the left, Jim.” Blah blah blah. Let’s start simple. Stop picking up pieces of grass and dropping it. When I see that happening I chuckle on the inside (it’s frowned upon when I chuckle at people on the outside). You are telling yourself information that is completely irrelevant to the shot you are about to hit. Here’s why. For one, wind affects a projectile less the faster that projectile is moving. The golf ball is moving it’s fastest when you hit it. Then it runs into air resistance and starts to slow down. So you finding out that the grass you flippantly tossed into the air is moving left to right tells you nothing helpful. You don’t need to know what the wind is doing at your position. You need to know what it is doing “out there”. Out where? Where the ball is moving it’s slowest in it’s forward path. That’s where it hits is peak and gravity stops fighting the ball’s momentum and starts helping propel it back to the earth. That’s why you need to know how far out in front of you your ball is going to peak. I’m not saying go full Bryson here, but hop on Trackman and hit your stock yardages. Trackman will tell you how far out your shot hit its apex. Then divide that number by the carry yardage. That percentage is what you need to know to do some quick math. You might find across most of your clubs that percentage is pretty similar. If so, find the average of the averages (not always the best idea, but we are already doing Kentucky Windage so might as well) and just use that number. For me I use 66% or 2/3. It’s also helpful to know when you are trying to go over things. Like in that playing lesson, I needed to go over a tree. Quick math (and experience) told me I probably didn’t have enough space to get the ball up that quick. I was right. Learn to read the wind at that distance and you’ll be doing yourself a lot more favors than tossing up pieces of grass and a prayer.

Hopefully that gives you some idea on how the weather impacts how you play the game. It’s not about how much shorter or further the ball flies. I know we really didn’t get into wind enough to really flesh it out (Look at the terrain and foliage and think what would water do going through here. That’s a good start). The weather impacts the game in the decisions that you make. That’s the difference between playing golf swing and playing golf. The game is about the decisions that you make. That’s the difference between playing golf and golf swing. So use the cold weather to hone your decision making skills. When it warms up, your game will thank you for it.