Skip to main contentDo warm golf balls—assuming identical brand, age, compression, etc., and a consistent 80-degree temperature— go farther than cold (say, 40-degree temperature) golf balls when struck with a consistent and equal force? —Old Golfer Needs Advantage
I’m of two minds about this question, Golfer. On the one hand, I like its straightforward, old-school charm—it’s the kind of applied-science question Marilyn vos Savant might have answered in Parade magazine back in 1985. On the other, I know there are guys out there who’ve spent decades poring over the minutiae of golf-ball physics like JFK buffs studying the Zapruder film and will pounce on any errors I make with the glee of a flat-earther discovering the U.N. logo.
These waters are made even more perilous by the fact that golf science is like early Christianity, with competing sects all disagreeing on obscure points of doctrine and perennially accusing each other of heresy. It’s like that theological debate from The Name of the Rose—no matter what you say, someone will tell you you’re wrong.
Here’s what we do know: All else being equal, the ball really does carry farther in warm weather than in cold weather. Moreover, there’s actually a rule forbidding players to artificially warm their balls (yeah, yeah, laugh it up) during a round. So a heated ball must go farther, right?
Well, no. The ball goes farther because the air is warmer, not because the ball is. Warm air is less dense, offering less resistance to the ball’s travel. There are some minor variations due to the temperature of the ball itself—it seems to be harder for the club face to impart spin to a cold ball, for example, which reduces lift and shortens drives, while an excessively warm ball can soften and rebound off the club face less energetically, which can also shorten drives—but the temperature of the air has a much more pronounced effect.
Because golfers are monomaniacal lunatics for whom no aspect of the game is too insignificant to waste a month of your life on, the effects of ball temperature on shot distance have been tested in the real world at least three times. In these studies, heating the ball gave results ranging from very slightly longer to very slightly shorter, while chilling the ball consistently reduced shot length. In other words, you can’t improve your game by preheating your golf balls, but you can definitely make your opponent’s game worse by freezing theirs. It’s not even against the rules! (Unless you get caught.) Good luck!
Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com .
