How many clubs does temperature, altitude and wind actually move you?
- Distance
- Ball flight
- Wind & altitude
"It's cold, take one more club." "We're up in the mountains, the ball flies." Both are true — but when temperature, altitude and wind are all acting at once, no amount of feel will tell you what the total comes to in clubs.
The Carry Range Finder recalculates the carry of all 14 clubs for the day's conditions. Here is how to use it, and what came out of actually running the numbers.
Three steps
1. Enter your baseline carries (once)
Enter each club's carry in calm air, flat ground, 15 °C, at sea level. Everything rests on this.
The important part is to leave the roll out. If "150 yards with a 7-iron" is your number including run, your actual carry is shorter. Enter more than you really carry and every adjustment comes out inflated too.
Set a club to 0 and it disappears from the table. Your entries are saved in the browser,
so from next time you only need to change the conditions.
2. Describe today's air
Temperature, altitude, pressure and humidity. For pressure, use the figure from the forecast (sea-level corrected) as it is. If you don't know it, leaving it at 1013 is fine — the effect is small.
3. Wind and elevation
Wind direction is given relative to your target line, as the direction the wind is blowing
towards. For elevation, + is uphill and − is downhill.
Only one column really matters
You don't need to remember how many metres the adjusted carry came to. Just read the "plays like" column and change clubs accordingly.
Taking a 7-iron with a 128 m baseline:
| Conditions | Adjusted | Plays like |
|---|---|---|
| Winter morning (5 °C, 3 m/s into the wind) | 120 m | 8I |
| Mountain course (2000 m altitude) | 137 m | 6I |
| 10 m uphill | 115 m | 8I |
Three things the numbers showed
Altitude matters far more than temperature
Changes from a 200 m driver, 128 m 7-iron and 96 m pitching wedge.
| Conditions | Driver | 7I | PW |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 °C | −2 m | −2 m | −1 m |
| 35 °C | +5 m | +3 m | +2 m |
| 1000 m altitude | +7 m | +5 m | +3 m |
| 2000 m altitude | +13 m | +9 m | +5 m |
| 5 m/s headwind | −15 m | −11 m | −9 m |
| 5 m/s tailwind | +12 m | +7 m | +5 m |
Forgetting 1000 m of altitude costs you more than twice as much as being 10 °C out on temperature. And wind beats both. Wind first, then altitude, then temperature is enough.
Elevation hurts short clubs most in relative terms
Playing 10 m uphill:
| Club | Change | Share of baseline |
|---|---|---|
| Driver | −16 m | −8% |
| 7I | −13 m | −10% |
| PW | −14 m | −15% |
In metres, the driver loses the most — its shallower descent angle means it gives up more horizontal distance before reaching the target height. But club selection works in percentages, so the wedge is what feels badly off. This is why uphill short irons and wedges are so often left short.
Humidity barely does anything
Going from 50% to 90% humidity moves every club by less than a metre. "It's humid today, the ball won't go" is a common feeling, but the air density says the opposite: water vapour is lighter than dry air, so a humid day flies very slightly further.
Think of the humidity field as being there to confirm you can ignore it.
If a club can't get there, it says so
On a steep uphill shot, a wedge physically cannot climb to the target height. Those clubs get an "out of reach" badge and are dropped from the average. Sometimes you find that a hole you were planning to attack with a wedge simply doesn't reach.
Compare the ball flights
"Show trajectory" on any row draws the baseline flight and today's flight on top of each other. The same club coming in high and long at altitude, or dropping out of the sky into a headwind, behaves completely differently on the green — which the numbers alone don't show you.
Assumptions and limits
- It calculates carry only. Roll is not included.
- Wind is treated as uniform over the whole course; wind shear with height is not modelled.
- Launch angle and spin rate per club use typical values. If your ball flight is unusually high or low, the size of the adjustments will shift somewhat.
Underneath, the tool works out the air density from your conditions and numerically integrates the equations of motion including drag and Magnus lift. For each club it solves backwards for the ball speed that produces exactly your entered carry under baseline conditions, then flies that same ball speed through today's air — the difference is the adjustment.
Start by entering your own baseline carries.