As someone who plays on a golf team, I'm always finding time to bother someone about my love for golf. I feel it doesn't receive enough credit because, even though it is not "physically demanding" in the sense that basketball or track are, it is very mentally demanding. On TV, you might see someone like Lexi Thompson and think she's just another pretty pro golfer, wearing pink and her favorite ladybug earrings, hitting the ball from point A to point B, but there is so much more going on beneath the surface. Let me walk you through what calculations go through my mind when I play golf. Math and physics are every golfer's best friends.
First off, before I step up to the tee box, I check to see what the par for this hole is. The par is the amount of strokes that is my target score for the hole. Anything less than par is awesome, but anything above par isn't ideal. You can either have a par 3, par 4, or a par 5. Let's pretend that this hole is a par 5. This means I want to complete this hole in 5 strokes.
I have a golf ball and a tee, but what club should I use and where do I tee off? I have to check the yardage from the tees that I'm hitting off of in order to choose my club, but there are usually four types of tee boxes on a golf course. The first, usually designated by black tee markers, are the championship tees, used in professional tournaments or club championships. The second, usually designated by yellow tee markers, are the middle handicap tees, used by men and women who are usually advanced adult players. The third, usually designated by white tee markers, are the men's tees. The fourth, usually designated by red tee markers, are the women's tees. I play from the women's tees, so I have to go to the scorecard to check the yardage to the hole from the women's tees.
Let's make up a hypothetical hole scenario. From the women's tees, I see the hole is 363 yards (331.9272 meters) away from me. The club that takes me the furthest is my driver, which usually takes me around 240 yards (219.456 meters) at best. I take my driver and tee up my golf ball. I know I will have 123 yards (112.4712 meters) to make up after my drive if I hit it as well as I can. Therefore, I know I have to put 100% of my effort into it. This means taking the club all the way back and bringing it all the way through my shot, finishing over my left shoulder (I'm a right-handed player) and not stopping at contact with the ball. For me, this means I take the club back about 270 degrees and come through at a speed of about 105 miles per hour (168.98112 kilometers per hour). I take my shot and the ball goes, but I'm very lucky and it hits the cart path, bouncing a little before it stops.
I estimate that the ball has gone 235 yards (214.884 meters) before it hits the cart path and I've swung at about 100 miles per hour. Then, I look how far it is from the spot on the cart path where it bounced, and I estimate that it bounced 15 yards (13.716 meters). Here, I've guessed that the ball's total distance traveled has been 250 yards (228.6 meters). This means that I'm about 113 yards (103.3272 meters) from the hole. However, there is a sand bunker in front of me and the hole is on a hill. The lower side of the hole is facing me. Let's say that I don't want to put downhill, so I'm going to try to keep it on the lower side of the hole in order to put uphill. Therefore, the next club I choose has to give me enough distance to stay out of the sand bunker but not too much distance that I end up on the higher side of the hole. The ground is also not simply flat between me and the hole, so I also need enough loft to get myself above the sand bunker.
The lower side of the hole is about 100 yards (91.44 meters) away from me and that is my target, so I pick a club for that distance. If I do a full swing with my pitching wedge, it will probably take me around 120 yards (109.728 meters). However, if I do a half swing with my pitching wedge, starting the swing from just above my waist on the right side of my body and following through to just above my waist on the left side of my body, it will probably take me around 90 yards (82.296 meters). Once the ball hits the green, it will most likely not just stop there. It will roll, so I have to take into account how far it will roll as well. Even though the ball will go 90 yards in this case, it will probably roll a bit further, getting me to around that distance of 100 yards that is my target.
I take the shot with my pitching wedge and it goes to the spot on the lower side of the hole that I wanted it to. That was my second shot, so I have three shots left to work with in order to get a par on this par 5. I'm putting uphill, so I know I have to have enough power to reach the hole without it rolling back down to me. This means I need to take my putter back as far as I am following through it. If I take my putter back 4 inches (10.16 cm), I will have to follow through 4 inches as well. I know, however, that doing this will not take me the distance that I need to go. Therefore, I decide to double the take back distance so as to double the distance the ball travels. I take my putter back 8 inches (20.32 cm), bring it through 8 inches without stopping at ball contact, and it stops on top of the higher side of the hole, about 3 inches (7.62 cm) from the hole.
Now on my fourth shot, I take my putter back 1 inch (2.54 cm), bring it through 1 inch, and it goes into the hole. I'm now done with the hole and onto the next. I took 4 strokes, so I shot a 4 for this hole, which is a birdie (meaning I shot one under par). There might not be equations that golfers memorize to play the sport, but each golfer applies their own game to math in order to figure out how to get their target score. Even though you might not see it, golfers are constantly taking in numerical information and outputting different shots.
That's it for now! Thanks for reading & stay tuned
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