Embrace The Weather

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Yesterday, I was sitting at home admiring how nice the weather was outside. I had decided that I was going to take it easy this weekend to heal up because I was a little sore and tired. But with the weather like that, I figured I’d head over to the driving range and hit some balls.

The way the range is situated at my club, it’s a couple hundred yards from the parking lot. So I walked out there, all the while admiring how nice the weather was. I went to the driving range booth, grabbed a large basket, and headed for the tee.

It wasn’t until that point that it finally occurred to me how windy it was (afterward, I checked and the wind was 19 mph, gusting to 29mph). That just goes to show how oblivious I can be sometimes to what’s going on around me. I set up at the tee hitting a few warm-up wedges and I couldn’t believe how windy it was. I was hitting directly into it too.

After a few balls, I started wondering if I should go back to the booth and beg for a rain check. I thought about it for a second, and I realized that I should be embracing the conditions. I’m going to end up playing in conditions like that at some point (and I certainly have before). Now, I know that in some parts of the country, winds like that are very common, but here in New Jersey, that’s just flat-out windy.

So I set out to try and learn as much as I could about the conditions.

I practiced my knock-down shots with a handful of clubs. I hit draws and fades to see how much the wind would affect them. I hit wedges that ballooned up, so I could see how my distances were affected. I hit drivers that were teed down and moved a little toward the middle of my stance, to keep them down. I tried to hit wedges on lower trajectories. This was all in addition to the standard stuff I work on (getting my lower body to fire and not stall out, and making more consistent contact).

I decided then: from now on I’m going to embrace the weather when I practice so I can be better prepared when I face it on the course.