Opinion & Analysis
The Wedge Guy: Is wind golf’s toughest challenge?
We all know this fascinating game we play can throw a wide variety of challenges at you, from trees to rough, to sand, to fast greens, narrow fairways…well, you get the picture. But maybe the toughest challenge of all is wind. And those who play in Texas, Florida, and other breezy places get more than their share of it.
Even on the PGA Tour, you typically do not see the super-low scoring when the wind picks up. Like many of the players said after the massacre at Medinah a couple of weeks ago, length doesn’t phase them anymore. Give them soft greens and it doesn’t matter how long the course is playing. But toss in a nice breeze of 15-20 mph or more, and that low scoring just doesn’t happen, does it?
There is even an old Scottish saying that goes something like: “If there be nay wind, there be nay golf.” A stout wind changes the game tremendously.
Having spent my whole life in Texas, playing in the wind is just as much a part of golf as grass. It is almost always blowing from one direction or another, and learning how to maneuver a small, light white ball through that wind adds a whole new dimension to the game. The two keys, of course, are to control trajectory and spin.
I will admit that the ball gurus have helped a lot with the newer golf balls, which spin a great deal less than our old balata balls that I learned with. That cuts down on both backspin and sidespin, which, in turn, makes hitting better golf shots into the wind or with crosswinds much easier.
But I’m finding that as the club manufacturers deal with that lower-spinning ball, they are producing clubs–from drivers to irons–that launch the ball a great deal higher than before. And to me at least, that makes filling in your set a much more challenging process.
I still prefer single-piece forged blade irons, as they allow you to have more control over trajectory in my opinion. (That’s why the majority of the best iron players on tour still play them as well). I watch friends fight the wind with their perimeter-weighted irons that were designed to put the ball as high into the air as possible. That’s what the designers were striving for, so it’s hard to fight all the science they have built into these new iron designs. I’ve gamed my irons for five years now—I designed them to be forgiving, while still allowing me a high degree of trajectory control.
Likewise for my driver—a prototype that never made it to production because of its small size (410 cc) and the fact that it was [maybe] not quite as “forgiving” as bigger designs. But it allows me to have a tremendous amount of trajectory control as well as the ability to work the ball in both directions off the tee, which is how I like to play the game.
However, my recent experience of trying to find the perfect fairway wood has been baffling and frustrating. As I’ve written, I’m a big fan of the 4-wood, and have had several I just loved—but I thought I would see about “upgrading” to one of the newer models that claim to be longer. I’ve tried several and all are long and solid, but they launch the ball so high, I cannot find a way to get the low, boring shot into the wind out of them. Comparing 17-degree models to one another, they all seem the same–long and high.
So, I have been forced to get creative with filling that gap in my set. And my solution was an early generation Sonartec NP-99 3-wood at 15 degrees (eBay: $45!), which I cut down to 42.5” in length. I can hit it high when I want, and have no problem hitting “stingers” or other lower-trajectory shots when called for into a stiff breeze.
All this to say you can still get creative when putting your set together to allow you to play the game the way you want.
Teasers from our survey
The GolfWRX editors and I thank you all who persevered our tech glitch and completed our survey. As we near 1,000 completed, the insight you all have provided will give us some deeper understanding of you and your games so that we can do our best to be more relevant to you going forward. I have a lot of work ahead of me to analyze and cross-tabulate your answers, but I will begin sharing insight you have given in the weeks ahead.
I can share that overall there were surprises, along with things we had pretty much figured out.
- The GolfWRX readers skew a bit younger than the golfer population at large. This is no surprise as the younger generations are much more engaged on forums like this in any discipline.
- The GolfWRX readers play much more golf than the golf population at large. Again, no surprise as you all are expressing your much deeper relationship with the game.
- Likewise, GolfWRXers average lower scores than the general golfer population, again as we suspected.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to devote a portion of each blog article to sharing deeper insight into what we learned from you all. I think you will find this very interesting, so stay tuned.
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The PGA TOUR heads to New Orleans to play the 2023 Zurich Classic of New Orleans. In a welcome change from the usual stroke play, the Zurich Classic is a team event. On Thursday and Saturday, the teams play best ball, and on Friday and Sunday the teams play alternate shot.
TPC Louisiana is a par 72 that measures 7,425 yards. The course features some short par 4s and plenty of water and bunkers, which makes for a lot of exciting risk/reward scenarios for competitors. Pete Dye designed the course in 2004 specifically for the Zurich Classic, although the event didn’t make its debut until 2007 because of Hurricane Katrina.
Coming off of the Masters and a signature event in consecutive weeks, the field this week is a step down, and understandably so. Many of the world’s top players will be using this time to rest after a busy stretch.
However, there are some interesting teams this season with some stars making surprise appearances in the team event. Some notable teams include Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, Collin Morikawa and Kurt Kitayama, Will Zalatoris and Sahith Theegala as well as a few Canadian teams, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin and Taylor Pendrith and Corey Conners.
Past Winners at TPC Louisiana
- 2023: Riley/Hardy (-30)
- 2022: Cantlay/Schauffele (-29)
- 2021: Leishman/Smith (-20)
- 2019: Palmer/Rahm (-26)
- 2018: Horschel/Piercy (-22)
- 2017: Blixt/Smith (-27)
2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans Picks
Tom Hoge/Maverick McNealy +2500 (DraftKings)
Tom Hoge is coming off of a solid T18 finish at the RBC Heritage and finished T13 at last year’s Zurich Classic alongside Harris English.
This season, Hoge is having one of his best years on Tour in terms of Strokes Gained: Approach. In his last 24 rounds, the only player to top him on the category is Scottie Scheffler. Hoge has been solid on Pete Dye designs, ranking 28th in the field over his past 36 rounds.
McNealy is also having a solid season. He’s finished T6 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and T9 at the PLAYERS Championship. He recently started working with world renowned swing coach, Butch Harmon, and its seemingly paid dividends in 2024.
Keith Mitchell/Joel Dahmen +4000 (DraftKings)
Keith Mitchell is having a fantastic season, finishing in the top-20 of five of his past seven starts on Tour. Most recently, Mitchell finished T14 at the Valero Texas Open and gained a whopping 6.0 strokes off the tee. He finished 6th at last year’s Zurich Classic.
Joel Dahmen is having a resurgent year and has been dialed in with his irons. He also has a T11 finish at the PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass which is another Pete Dye track. With Mitchell’s length and Dahmen’s ability to put it close with his short irons, the Mitchell/Dahmen combination will be dangerous this week.
Taylor Moore/Matt NeSmith +6500 (DraftKings)
Taylor Moore has quickly developed into one of the more consistent players on Tour. He’s finished in the top-20 in three of his past four starts, including a very impressive showing at The Masters, finishing T20. He’s also finished T4 at this event in consecutive seasons alongside Matt NeSmith.
NeSmith isn’t having a great 2024, but has seemed to elevate his game in this format. He finished T26 at Pete Dye’s TPC Sawgrass, which gives the 30-year-old something to build off of. NeSmith is also a great putter on Bermudagrass, which could help elevate Moore’s ball striking prowess.
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After having four of the top twelve players on the leaderboard at The Masters, LIV Golf is set for their fifth event of the season: LIV Adelaide.
For both LIV fans and golf fans in Australia, LIV Adelaide is one of the most anticipated events of the year. With 35,000 people expected to attend each day of the tournament, the Grange Golf Club will be crawling with fans who are passionate about the sport of golf. The 12th hole, better known as “the watering hole”, is sure to have the rowdiest of the fans cheering after a long day of drinking some Leishman Lager.
The Grange Golf Club is a par-72 that measures 6,946 yards. The course features minimal resistance, as golfers went extremely low last season. In 2023, Talor Gooch shot consecutive rounds of 62 on Thursday and Friday, giving himself a gigantic cushion heading into championship Sunday. Things got tight for a while, but in the end, the Oklahoma State product was able to hold off The Crushers’ Anirban Lahiri for a three-shot victory.
The Four Aces won the team competition with the Range Goats finishing second.
*All Images Courtesy of LIV Golf*
Past Winners at LIV Adelaide
- 2023: Talor Gooch (-19)
Stat Leaders Through LIV Miami
Green in Regulation
- Richard Bland
- Jon Rahm
- Paul Casey
Fairways Hit
- Abraham Ancer
- Graeme McDowell
- Henrik Stenson
Driving Distance
- Bryson DeChambeau
- Joaquin Niemann
- Dean Burmester
Putting
- Cameron Smith
- Louis Oosthuizen
- Matt Jones
2024 LIV Adelaide Picks
Cameron Smith +1400 (DraftKings)
When I pulled up the odds for LIV Adelaide, I was more than a little surprised to see multiple golfers listed ahead of Cameron Smith on the betting board. A few starts ago, Cam finished runner-up at LIV Hong Kong, which is a golf course that absolutely suits his eye. Augusta National in another course that Smith could roll out of bed and finish in the top-ten at, and he did so two weeks ago at The Masters, finishing T6.
At Augusta, he gained strokes on the field on approach, off the tee (slightly), and of course, around the green and putting. Smith able to get in the mix at a major championship despite coming into the week feeling under the weather tells me that his game is once again rounding into form.
The Grange Golf Club is another course that undoubtedly suits the Australian. Smith is obviously incredibly comfortable playing in front of the Aussie faithful and has won three Australian PGA Championship’s. The course is very short and will allow Smith to play conservative off the tee, mitigating his most glaring weakness. With birdies available all over the golf course, there’s a chance the event turns into a putting contest, and there’s no one on the planet I’d rather have in one of those than Cam Smith.
Louis Oosthuizen +2200 (DraftKings)
Louis Oosthuizen has simply been one of the best players on LIV in the 2024 seas0n. The South African has finished in the top-10 on the LIV leaderboard in three of his five starts, with his best coming in Jeddah, where he finished T2. Perhaps more impressively, Oosthuizen finished T7 at LIV Miami, which took place at Doral’s “Blue Monster”, an absolutely massive golf course. Given that Louis is on the shorter side in terms of distance off the tee, his ability to play well in Miami shows how dialed he is with the irons this season.
In addition to the LIV finishes, Oosthuizen won back-to-back starts on the DP World Tour in December at the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the Mauritus Open. He also finished runner-up at the end of February in the International Series Oman. The 41-year-old has been one of the most consistent performers of 2024, regardless of tour.
For the season, Louis ranks 4th on LIV in birdies made, T9 in fairways hit and first in putting. He ranks 32nd in driving distance, but that won’t be an issue at this short course. Last season, he finished T11 at the event, but was in decent position going into the final round but fell back after shooting 70 while the rest of the field went low. This season, Oosthuizen comes into the event in peak form, and the course should be a perfect fit for his smooth swing and hot putter this week.
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Of all the clubs in our bags, wedges are almost always the simplest in construction and, therefore, the easiest to analyze what might make one work differently from another if you know what to look for.
Wedges are a lot less mysterious than drivers, of course, as the major brands are working with a lot of “pixie dust” inside these modern marvels. That’s carrying over more to irons now, with so many new models featuring internal multi-material technologies, and almost all of them having a “badge” or insert in the back to allow more complex graphics while hiding the actual distribution of mass.
But when it comes to wedges, most on the market today are still single pieces of molded steel, either cast or forged into that shape. So, if you look closely at where the mass is distributed, it’s pretty clear how that wedge is going to perform.
To start, because of their wider soles, the majority of the mass of almost any wedge is along the bottom third of the clubhead. So, the best wedge shots are always those hit between the 2nd and 5th grooves so that more mass is directly behind that impact. Elite tour professionals practice incessantly to learn to do that consistently, wearing out a spot about the size of a penny right there. If impact moves higher than that, the face is dramatically thinner, so smash factor is compromised significantly, which reduces the overall distance the ball will fly.
Every one of us, tour players included, knows that maddening shot that we feel a bit high on the face and it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s not your fault.
If your wedges show a wear pattern the size of a silver dollar, and centered above the 3rd or 4th groove, you are not getting anywhere near the same performance from shot to shot. Robot testing proves impact even two to three grooves higher in the face can cause distance loss of up to 35 to 55 feet with modern ‘tour design’ wedges.
In addition, as impact moves above the center of mass, the golf club principle of gear effect causes the ball to fly higher with less spin. Think of modern drivers for a minute. The “holy grail” of driving is high launch and low spin, and the driver engineers are pulling out all stops to get the mass as low in the clubhead as possible to optimize this combination.
Where is all the mass in your wedges? Low. So, disregarding the higher lofts, wedges “want” to launch the ball high with low spin – exactly the opposite of what good wedge play requires penetrating ball flight with high spin.
While almost all major brand wedges have begun putting a tiny bit more thickness in the top portion of the clubhead, conventional and modern ‘tour design’ wedges perform pretty much like they always have. Elite players learn to hit those crisp, spinny penetrating wedge shots by spending lots of practice time learning to consistently make contact low in the face.
So, what about grooves and face texture?
Grooves on any club can only do so much, and no one has any material advantage here. The USGA tightly defines what we manufacturers can do with grooves and face texture, and modern manufacturing techniques allow all of us to push those limits ever closer. And we all do. End of story.
Then there’s the topic of bounce and grinds, the most complex and confusing part of the wedge formula. Many top brands offer a complex array of sole configurations, all of them admittedly specialized to a particular kind of lie or turf conditions, and/or a particular divot pattern.
But if you don’t play the same turf all the time, and make the same size divot on every swing, how would you ever figure this out?
The only way is to take any wedge you are considering and play it a few rounds, hitting all the shots you face and observing the results. There’s simply no other way.
So, hopefully this will inspire a lively conversation in our comments section, and I’ll chime in to answer any questions you might have.
And next week, I’ll dive into the rest of the wedge formula. Yes, shafts, grips and specifications are essential, too.
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Al
Sep 4, 2019 at 9:16 pm
The main point of Terry’s analysis is that if some have their way, weight would be taken out of the ball because the Pros hit it so far. If this insanity ever wins out, every one of the dissenting views of this article would completely evaporate..
Chimchim
Sep 4, 2019 at 5:23 pm
Wind is the hardest to play in, for sure. As much as I try, inevitably, the wind gets into my head at some point in the round – with not good results. No other condition does that. I will agree that inconsistent greens will impact putting, but I will take my chances once I am there.
I have a couple of the sonartec np woods. they are /were nice. I just get more distance out of my current 3 wood and hit hybrids for the “5 wood”.
gwelfgulfer
Sep 3, 2019 at 9:16 pm
The gap between the ears is the toughest challenge… How many million dollar swings are there out there with $2 brains…
drkviol801
Sep 3, 2019 at 8:23 pm
A solidly struck ball won’t move much in the wind, y’all are just hacks.
drkviol801
Sep 3, 2019 at 8:25 pm
*Wont move much in crosswind when compressed, into and with the wind are fairly easy to judge…
James
Sep 3, 2019 at 7:47 pm
So which would you rather: 30 mph wind or 20 yd wide fairways with 4 inch rough? I’ll take the wind.
Alex
Sep 3, 2019 at 2:56 pm
Heavy Wind is the hardest challenge in golf hands down imo. 12/15 mph is fine and a lot of courses are actually designed for it. Usually a south wind that longer holes play into that almost need the wind for it to play correctly. When it gets up around 30 that’s when it’s a curve ball. 12-15 is usually steady when it’s 30 you’ll get gusts in the 40s or it’ll swirl on you and wreck your yardage control. Gimmick pins are 2nd. When I say gimmick pins I mean holes that you’d rather be 20 feet below than 4 feet above. None of us are good enough to be upset hitting it to 4 feet and a bad hole location that doesn’t reward a good shot will make you want to walk off the course and scream at the superintendent. Pga tour guys have that game. I’’m gonna be extremely pissed off if I stuff a par 3 or approach on par 4 to have a defensive don’t make a bogey putt from inside 6 feet.
Ryan
Sep 4, 2019 at 10:11 am
I was playing with a group here in Texas one windy summer morning. We were on 17, which was a par 3. It was playing into the wind and although short, it was still a middle iron to long iron for a shorter hitter. Guy hit a great shot to 3 feet. I turned and said, “great shot, good luck with that putt though”. It was a full on gimmick pin. He barely tapped the putt, it missed the hole and went 10 feet by. He then missed the next one, for a nice little bogey. Thought he was going to strangle the super. He went in the clubhouse looking for the guy but didn’t find him. He gave them an ear full about the pin location. In his defense, it was a ridiculous pin. The flag was nearly at an angle.
ChipNRun
Sep 3, 2019 at 1:48 pm
Wind is a factor, but not the biggest challenge for everyday golfers. For us average WRXers, I would say inconsistent course manicure is the biggest challenge.
I played a tournament at a former country club that became a decent municipal course. Only problem – whether the rough got mowed the day before can make for a 2- to 4-stroke swing in scores. I mean, the “first cut” gets ankle deep really fast.
Two of the par 5 holes are notorious. No. 3 runs along the north edge of the course. It’s blind tee shot, and anything move than a foot into the left rough can end up being a lost ball. Same problem on No. 16 – a crowned fairway runs along the south edge of the course, and anything that bounces left seemingly leaves the planet.
As far as wind goes, around 35 MPH gets touchy – but I prefer not to play in such weather. Call me crazy, but in persimmon-headed driver days a player was expected to be able to handle the wind. For a head wind, tee the ball low, or punch up a tuft of grass about an inch to keep the ball low and hot. Last time I checked, the wind blows on everyone. Time of day can matter if the wind gets stronger in AM or PM – but that’s golf.
Being this is the Wedge Guy’s column, let’s talk cross winds. Inside 70 yards, if I’m facing a crosswind with an open green front, I may take 7i punch-and-run to keep the ball low.
For full iron shots, the iron designers suggest taking an extra club or two into a headwind rather than trying for an unpracticed knock-down. If it’s a cross wind, you can work it or fight it. One of my favorite shots in golf is an iron shot draw back against a left-to right crosswind.
Learning to handle the wind is part of GOLF. Learning to handle jungle rough… well, sometimes it can’t be handled.