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Work With the Wind
Wind is virtually always present on the Cape. Jane Frost, who operates a teaching school out of Sandwich Hollows Golf Club and is a former Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Teacher of the Year, has an adage for her students: When it’s breezy, swing easy. “When that wind is blowing in your face your instinct is to attempt to overpower Mother Nature, and that’s never a good thing,” Frost says. “She’s going to win every time.”
Danny Caverly, director of instruction at Willowbend Country Club in Mashpee, advises golfers playing against a headwind to tee the ball one-half inch lower than normal, move it slightly back in your stance and take a three-quarters swing. And then hold the finish to three-quarters. “Taking a full swing in the wind will throw you all over the place,” he says. “Amateurs are almost always better off making a three-quarters swing. Look at Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson—they control their irons by controlling their finish. Very seldom do you see their club go past parallel at the finish.”
To learn to make an abbreviated swing, Caverly suggests laying down a club at your target line, then scratching a perpendicular line in the turf with a tee. Tee the ball on the perpendicular line and take half-swings. “If the divot is not on that line, don’t do anything else until it is,” he says. “You have to make contact with the club striking the ball and the ground at the same time.”
