Most weekend golfers don’t do enough to compensate for the effects of wind on their shots. A 20 mph headwind can shorten your shot by 20 yards. A 20 mph tailwind can create an extra 10 yards of carry. A crosswind of the same speed can easily double the distance of your slice or hook, turning what’s normally a 20 yard miss into a 40 yard disaster.

Before heading out, I always check a weather website to determine the general wind conditions. But wind speed can vary significantly on the course, even from hole to hole.

Without a handheld anemometer, figuring wind speed generally is reduced to a few superstitions, such as tossing some blades of grass into the air to see what happens. Fortunately, there’s a more “scientific” method. The US government has used our tax dollars to construct the handy chart below:

Over the last several years I’ve become convinced that a good deal of the problem with slow rounds is that players are not teeing off from the proper distances. Guys with white tee distance—in a fit of machismo—are teeing off from the blues, and red tee-ers from the whites. Inadequate distances forces them to swing harder, causing more missed fairways. Drives that fall too far from the green force the use of long irons and fairway woods, resulting in missing regulation, and eat up time with costly chips, flubbed flops and multiple shots out of greenside bunkers. Long shots into the green leave players far from the hole, requiring extra putts.

It’s interesting that players who would roll their eyes in disgust if a woman tried to tee off from the whites nonetheless will pull the same stunt by starting at the tips.

Playing from the wrong tees also greatly reduces the fun of playing golf. Ninety nine percent of us are not practicing for the US Open. It’s simply a lot more fun to hit driver-eight iron-putt-putt than driver-long iron-wedge-chip-putt-putt on every hole. And if you do regularly play with guys who hit from the back tees, just use the handicap system to level things out.

But what are the correct tees? Chris Mile of the Miles of Golf pro shop in Ann Arbor has a great rule of thumb. Simply multiply your average driving distance by 28. That’ll give you the yardage that you should play from; choose the tees closest to that distance.

This means that a player who hits the ball 200 yards on a drive should play from the tees closest to 5,600 yards.

I use the 200 yard drive figure deliberately. Studies have consistently shown that the average golfer drives the ball 200 yards on average, but THINKS he hits it 30 yards further. And remember that it’s the AVERAGE that counts. Occasionally uncorking a 270 yarder is not the same as hitting for an average of 270. You also have to consider all the times you don’t hit it that far.

Finally, parking the ego at the door: In 2010, the average PGA Tour player hits the ball just 282.7 yards on average.

Chris Mile explains the logic behind his 28 rule:

The logic behind the “Driver x 28″ is that an ideal course will have a combination of easy, moderately difficult, and difficult holes.  Knowing the length of your drive, you can estimate how far you hit your other clubs.  For example, most golfers will hit their 6 iron 64% of the distance of their driver.  If a medium distance par 4 is a drive and #6 iron, you know the length of a good par four for you is 164% of the distance of your drive.  Having this information plus definitions for short, medium, and long holes, you can compute the total distance for an ideal course for you based upon your driving distance.

I recently got an email from a reader who wanted to know what a Nassau was, and whether he should let his buddies talk him into playing one.

The answer is 1) the Nassau is a type of bet and 2) it can be a lot of fun if you put some limits on the game

In fact, the the $2 Nassau is probably the most popular betting game in golf. It’s a two-sided bet: player against player, or team against team. Nassaus lend themselves to a variety of team play formats. Scramble, four ball and alternate shot matches are common. Teams also can decide to play with, or without handicaps.

The Nasssau gets its name from the Nassau Country Club on Long Island, where the format was invented in the early 1900s. The game also is known as “2-2-2”, and “Best Nines.”

My friends at the Golf Instruction Courses have done some research on amateur swing speeds and tempo times at a local (Michigan) best ball golf outing. There’s a lot of data in the post and I found it very interesting reading.

Among the findings:

  * Swing speed range for men was 79 mph to 122 mph with the average being 105.
  * Swing speed range for women was 71 mph to 94 mph with the average being 79 mph (Note: only 7 ladies participated in the measurement survey).
  * Tempo time range for men was 0.78 sec to 1.40 sec with the average being 1.03
  * Tempo time range for women was 0.88 sec to 1.47 sec with the average being 1.28 sec.
  * The longest drive for men, approximately 270 yards, came from a swing speed of 109 mph with a tempo time of 1.14 seconds.
  * The longest drive for women, approximately 215 yards, came from a swing speed of 94 mph with a tempo time of 0.88.

Read the rest of the post.

With his record setting win this past week at the Verizon Heritage, Brian Gay’s rather unique swing has gotten some attention

From the PGA Tour Blog:

One of the reasons Gay is so accurate is his proper use of the swing plane. Gay is another great example of setting the golf club on plane at the top with a short arm swing. You may have noticed this week at Harbour Town that Gay’s hands only travelled to just above his right shoulder. This position allows Gay to set the golf club in a three-quarter position where the club shaft still points towards the target line. This arrangement of the arm swing and club shaft is a major component on hitting consistent and repetitive golf shots.

Gay just proves that you don’t have to have a Dailyesque swing (have you notice how far past parallel he goes) in order to score well.

Read the entire article for some very good tips.

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette has a nice little article with ten practical tips to improve your golf. These aren’t earth shattering, but practical steps that should improve things NOW, such as: develop a pre shot routine, work on a putting routine, turn with your torso, and so on. I found them very useful.

The one I liked best:

One of the biggest reasons for hitting bad shots is poor alignment, Sean Parees said.

“If your body is aiming one direction and you’re swinging at a target in another direction, you have to make some sort of compensation,” Parees said. “That means it is very difficult to swing the club properly.”

Parees said the best way to avoid that is to develop a pre-shot routine that will accomplish two things: Proper alignment and proper ball position.

• Here’s what to do:

Get behind the ball with your feet together and set your clubface down so it is facing an intermediate target. Then, as you look at your real target, take a small step with your left foot and slightly larger step with your right foot. This will ensure the ball is in the proper position in the left half of your stance, between the left heel and the center.

To practice this, take two clubs and, placing them on the ground, use one to represent the target line and the other to represent your body alignment. Place a third club perpendicular to your body alignment to represent your ball position. This will help you aim correctly.

Read the rest

In reviewing Chad Campbell’s disastrous bunker shot on the sixteenth in the third round of the 2009 Masters, Dottie Pepper offered a bit of sage advice:

The way to play a short bunker shot is to throw the sand onto the area of the grass where you want that ball to first make contact.

That’s a good visualization, and I’m absolutely certain that I’ll have more than one chance to test it in my next round.