Fascinating video shows how the wind affects your putts on the greens

Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.

As a junior golfer growing up in west Texas, playing in the wind was an everyday occurrence. No matter the time of day or time of year, the wind was blowing always whipping.

I’m not exactly a Tour pro, but this has helped a number of things in my development. No. 1, I became a low-ball hitter. And No. 2: I learned how to punch into the wind.

The latter is often forgotten. How much can the wind really do to your rolling golf ball?! But if the wind is blowing hard enough, it can definitely have an effect on how it rolls, especially on faster greens. This isn’t something you hear a lot about in golf education, but if you want to develop into a complete player, it is crucial that you learn how to putt into the wind.

For a better idea of ​​the impact the wind can have on your putts, watch GOLF Top 100 teacher Cameron McCormick’s video below.

As you can see in the video above, when the wind blows over your line it can easily throw your ball off the line. In the experiment McCormick performs in the video, a gust of wind at 20 mph can throw an 8-foot putt significantly off its line. On an otherwise flat putt, so much wind can blow the ball so far off its line that it doesn’t even touch the hole.

So, what can you do to ensure that you are not affected by the wind at a lot on the greens? The first thing is that you understand that it is so do affect how your ball rolls. So if you have a putt when there is some wind blowing, take into account the direction it is blowing. It may be subtle, but it should definitely be part of your calculation.

Once you start to understand how the wind affects your ball on the greens, you can make the necessary adjustments to make more putts regardless of the elements you’re playing in.

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