You did not lose 20 yards over the winter. The air did. Put in the conditions and find out what your shot is genuinely playing today, then pull the club that number demands instead of the one your ego wants. Runs entirely in your browser — no weather service, no tracking, nothing uploaded.
Cold costs roughly 2 yards per 10°F and a headwind about 1 yard per mph — this free plays-like calculator turns conditions into the club to pull.
The Plays Like Calculator is a free online golf yardage calculator that converts temperature, wind, altitude and elevation change into the distance a shot is genuinely playing. It is the only tool in this suite designed to be opened mid-round. If you need to calculate your adjusted golf yardage now, enter the target number and the conditions. If you are understanding how weather affects golf ball distance, it also settles the humid-air argument permanently: humid air is less dense than dry air, so the ball flies marginally further, not shorter.
The number on the sprinkler head.
Crosswind barely changes distance — leave it at zero.
Positive = uphill, negative = downhill.
Included purely so we can tell you it does not do what you think.
Used to work out how many clubs up or down. Default 11.
The sprinkler head says 150. The sprinkler head does not know it is 4°C, blowing 15 into your face, and the green sits 20 feet above you. Four separate forces are moving that number, and amateurs routinely ignore all of them and then blame the strike.
Roughly 2 yards per 10°F below a 70°F baseline. A cold golf ball is less elastic and cold air is denser, so you lose carry twice over. At near freezing you can be a full club down before you have done anything wrong.
A headwind hurts roughly twice as much as a tailwind helps: about 1 yard per mph into it, around half a yard per mph downwind. That asymmetry is why "it is only a two-club wind" is almost always an underestimate when you are hitting into it.
Thin air means about 2% extra carry per 1,000 feet. In Denver at 5,280 feet a 150-yard shot plays roughly 16 yards shorter. This is why holiday golf in the mountains briefly convinces people they have found something.
Here is the one everybody gets backwards. Humid air feels heavy, so golfers assume it is denser. It is not. A water molecule is lighter than the nitrogen and oxygen it displaces, so humid air is marginally less dense and the ball flies a fraction further. The effect is small enough to ignore entirely — but it is certainly not costing you distance.
Roughly 2 yards for every 10 degrees Fahrenheit below a 70 degree baseline. At 40 degrees a 150 yard shot plays about 6 yards longer, because both the ball and the denser cold air cost you carry.
About 1 yard per mph into a headwind, and roughly half a yard per mph downwind. A 10 mph headwind makes a 150 yard shot play around 160 yards, which is usually one extra club.
No. This is a myth. Water vapour is lighter than dry air, so humid air is actually less dense and the ball flies marginally further, not shorter. The effect is small enough to ignore.
Around 2 percent extra carry for every 1,000 feet of elevation. In Denver at roughly 5,280 feet a 150 yard shot plays about 16 yards shorter.