Playing In The Wind...
 

Jeff (and others), It's spring here in Indiana, which means lots of wind. I'm curious about what kind of strategies you employ when playing in the wind - both a mild wind and the 20-30+ variety.

The course I usually play has small, fast, domed greens, and I'm having a hard time hitting them in a strong wind, especially from the scoring areas - 150ish and in. Outside that yardage, and I can punch in a mid iron or smooth a long iron and have actually been closer to the pin than when I'm approaching from inside that yardage. I guess I need to work on some softer, smoother punch shots with my wedges and short/mid irons??

Strong punch shots with short swings!
 

Hi Bambam.

My 2 cents on it:

It's pretty windy those days here near Paris and the greens where I play are pretty hard and rolling.

Under these conditions, the priority is to be consistent: to achieve consistency we must not allow the wind to catch the ball and play with it.
Therefore, the solution is to hit it low - Ok, sorry, everyone knows that!

But low trajectories on hard greens can only stick with tons of backspin applied to the ball.

So the solution for me is to hit strong punch shots :monky: - short backswing, short followthrough with a strong downward blow!

You talk about "doing smoother punch shots with the wedges" but I think you will still hit it too high with not enough backspin.
How about taking, say, a 9 iron instead of a SW and punch it strong with a half lengh stroke? Should do the same yardage but with a lower trajectory and lots of sticky backspin?

you nailed the problem I'm having. A hard punch with a wedge goes high enough that the wind plays with it, smooth shoots don't hold the small, hard greens. I like the idea of the hard, punched half strokes; I'll give it a try, thanks!

not really a conventionnalist, but i usually just take more club and dont change much of anything, maybe a tad smoother swing.

That's exactly what I do on a 'normal' course, but it's not worked well at all on the course I've been playing. The greens don't hold without lots of spin, and since the greens are mounded, running the ball onto the green is very unreliable. I can usually get away with that technique in a 10-15 mph wind; it's when the wind really starts blowing that I'm chipping onto the green all day.

Plains Talk about wind!
 

It blows like heck here in Oklahoma...with very little to break the wind. Monday the gusts were almost up to 40 mph. Trying to take the backspin off it as you say does not help in terms of holding greens so I approach wind shots a little differently. I hit controlled pull shots. Shut face...shaft lean = low and left...I just adjust to accomodate the pull. I hit low screamers with more backspin than I get from low speed knuckle-ball version. It feels like I am coming over the top of it with a closed clubface i.e. pretty easy move to make!

Pretty hard move to get me not to make...just ask Ted! :)

Do you fight any snap hooks doing that?

Sidespin or not?
 

Very interesting, I'll give it a try asap!
From your description I assume this will put a draw spin on the ball: Won't that make it roll more when it touches the green?
Why not using the fade version of this shot? A low punched cut? I should stick a lot better? :scratch:

However, if you really hit TRUE pull shots (ball going left with no sidespin) with 10-5-C (closed stance) why not using a less lofted club with 10-5-A (square) :scratch:?

Less is more
 

I have actually had some of my best success when it blows very hard because it makes me focus on rhythm and pace more than anything else. I never try to overpower the ball when it is windy because more speed equals more spin which is bad in the wind.

I think most players swing to hard into the wind AND downwind which gets them of their game. I use the less is more philosophy when playing in the wind. Less effort into the wind with less loft. Use more loft downwind with the same effort and you will see better results.

I don't have this shot. What's the pattern?