Playing Golf: Up Wind

Video Transcript

"Okay, now how many of you have gone on a long bicycle ride and when the wind is at your back it's great, but when the wind is in your face, it's that much harder to ride? And a lot of times it seems like the wind's always in your face. Well it's the same in golf. If you're playing a long par four hole, or a long par three, if the wind is directly in your face it could make it a very, very long hole. So what a lot of people make the mistake of doing is if the wind's pretty strong at them, they just try to swing even harder, but a lot of times that will accentuate any swing flaws so then you'll slice the ball a little bit and combined with a big wind you'll get almost no distance and it might even push your ball out of bounds. So the thing to do here is if the wind is really strong in your face, so the shot that I'm hitting right here I'm looking to hit about one hundred and sixty yard shot. So normally I'd use maybe a seven iron or a six iron to hit that shot, but because the wind is strong in my face in this example I'm going to use a five iron. So the beauty of this is the five iron doesn't hit the ball quite as high as a six or seven iron, so I have to account for that but this way I don't have to swing that hard and I'll get the distance that I need. Now if the wind is severe enough it does change the shot, so it's harder to really aim it with as much precision as you normally would. So if the wind is directly in your face, grab a club or two more. Sometimes you might want to choke down a little bit because if you think the club you've grabbed is too powerful you'll take a little power out of it by choking down. So normally I'd hit a six iron here but I'm just going to hit a choked down five and swing nice and easy. And that was well executed. So I cheated the wind there, but sometimes the wind is tough and even for the top pros the winds can really affect their game. So just, you got to deal with it and make the best out of the situation you're in."