How Many Strokes Does Wind Cost in Golf?

A commentator will tell you a twenty mile an hour wind is worth two or three shots. That one turns out to be about right: +2.90 strokes per round at 20 mph. What the broadcast gets wrong is the shape of it.

The numbers here come in two layers. The scoring response to wind is measured, fitted from tracked shots against the weather that was actually blowing, across 88 event-seasons with each hole and each tournament week allowed its own baseline. The round totals then come from applying that response across 30 real PGA Tour routings, six wind speeds, four directions each.

Want to see what these numbers do for a player you care about? The scenario engine re-simulates a full round with the figures below as knobs you can drag. Open the scenario engine, free and no account needed.

Wind costs 1.45 strokes per round for every 10 mph

Dead calm to 25 mph is +3.63 strokes per round. The birdie rate is where you feel it, falling 8.1 percentage points, from 24.01% to 15.89%. Wind does not mainly turn pars into bogeys. It turns birdies into pars.

You do not get back downwind what you lose into it

This is the part worth knowing. Wind is not symmetric:

Into a 15 mph wind a par 4 costs +0.18 strokes. The same wind behind gives back 0.01, and the whole downwind column sits within a hundredth of a stroke of zero in both directions. That is the finding: a tailwind is worth about nothing. The headwind cost is large and cleanly measured; the tailwind benefit is not there to be measured.

A crosswind costs roughly half a headwind, and it costs that from either side, because the problem is holding a line rather than which way the ball is pushed.

A long hole into the wind is the worst of it. The headwind cost on a par 5 is +0.29 strokes at 15 mph against +0.18 on a par 4, because two full shots are exposed to it instead of one.

This asymmetry is why a windy day plays harder rather than merely differently. A routing that sends nine holes out and nine back does not net to zero. It nets to nine holes of headwind and nine holes of almost nothing.

What this does not measure

Direction is averaged away. Each speed is run from four cardinal directions and pooled, because at any one direction some holes play downwind and some into it, and a single-direction answer would measure that day's luck against the routing. A real round has one wind, so a bad draw can cost more than this.

There is no course ranking here on purpose. The measured response is tour-wide, and averaging four directions washes out most of what makes a routing exposed, so the spread across these 30 courses is only +3.24 to +3.98 strokes. That range reflects par mix, not how sheltered a property is. Ranking it would imply a measurement that was not made.

Calm is a counterfactual. The median course here typically plays in about 8 mph, so the 0 mph row is below what these venues normally see rather than a day anyone remembers.

Greens in regulation and proximity are held fixed. The measured response moves the score directly and deliberately leaves the shot-by-shot chain alone, so this is what wind does to the number on the card, not a claim about how many greens you hit getting there.

It is a tour professional's cost. Every coefficient is fitted from tour players' shots, by people who play wind for a living and whose miss pattern is built around it. An amateur loses far more to the same wind.

Gusts are not separated. A steady 20 mph and a gusting 20 mph are the same number here, and they are not the same thing to play in.

For what a pin position is worth under the same method, see what a tucked pin costs.

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For live hole-by-hole prices during a tournament, see the live board.