Weather Effects

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Weather Affects Golf Ball Flight

Golf is played in many different types of weather. The type of weather affects how far the ball travels and its amount of spin. Knowing how the weather conditions affect your ball, therefore, is necessary to making correct club selections.

The trajectory of a golf ball and the distance it travels depends on its initial trajectory, speed and spin, as well as what it's moving through (air). The air is not always the same. It varies in temperature, pressure, humidity and density. If there were no air whatsoever, the golf ball would not travel far. Likewise, if a ball is hit in air with no spin, it will not travel far. Check out the graph below of a golf ball hit with a driver under 3 different conditions.

Note first of all that the horizontal and vertical scales are quite different so as to depict clearly the differences in the conditions.

	Max Height	Distance
Trajectory under normal conditions	38 yd	248 yd
Trajectory if no air	8 yd	180 yd
Trajectory in air with no spin	6 yd	120 yd

The spin on the ball creates lift which increases the height reached and increases the time of flight so that the ball travels further. If there were no air, spin wouldn't matter at all. If the air is changed (pressure, temperature, density) the height and distance travelled will change.

Try out my Distance Calculator. You can input different conditions to see how they affect your tee shots.

Under normal conditions, the air does not change very much, but the amount can be significant and should be taken into account, otherwise your ball will fall too short or too long of its mark. Below is a table of distances for a 5-iron and Driver under different atmospheric conditions.

	5 degrees 100% humidity	20 degrees 50% humidity	35 degrees 80% humidity
Driver	244 yd	250 yd	262 yd
5-iron	168 yd	175 yd	182 yd

Note that temperature is in degrees Celcius. On the Fahrenheit scale, the temperatures would be 41, 68 and 95 degrees respectively. The distances also depend on the air pressure which not only depends on temperature and humidity but also on altitude. Hot and humid results in the ball travelling further.

I provide a service to golfers who are interested in determining how the weather will affect their shots. If you'd like to purchase this service, click the Order Services option. You can determine the effects of temperature, wind and elevation.

The Science of Meteorology online Learn some basic meteorology from StuffInTheAir.com

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