Golf strategy 12 Nov 2026 12 min read

Are These 5 Winter Golf Mistakes Costing You Shots?

If you play winter golf with your summer yardages and shot choices, you can give away shots before you even hit the ball. A drive that stops instead of running, an iron that digs into wet turf, or a chip that barely releases can leave you wondering where your usual game has gone.

I want you to make five adjustments: allow for the distance you actually have, improve your iron contact, adapt to compact bunker sand, choose your chip for the conditions, and find the pace of the greens before you play.

1. Using your summer yardages

There are three reasons your distance can fall in cold, wet conditions.

First, you may lose clubhead speed. The cold affects how freely you move. I remember playing in much cooler conditions and seeing my driver speed about 5 mph lower. That was my experience, rather than a fixed loss you should apply to your own swing.

Second, a cold ball and cold air can reduce how far the ball flies. Third, when the ground is soft, you lose bounce and roll. That last part can make a bigger difference to total distance than you expect.

Here are two examples. These are illustrative yardages, not measurements of what every golfer will lose:

Club and conditions	Carry	Bounce and roll	Total
7-iron, warm day and firm ground	140 yards	15 yards	155 yards
7-iron, cold day and wet ground	135 yards	2 yards	137 yards
Driver, summer conditions	220 yards	30 yards	250 yards
Driver, cold and wet conditions	210 yards	5 yards	215 yards

The 7-iron example loses only five yards of carry, but 18 yards overall. With the driver, the total difference is 35 yards. That changes the next shot as well: a hole can leave you hitting two or three clubs more into the green, depending on your distances and the hole.

For an approach, choose the club for the carry you need today. If you need to carry the front of the green, summer total distance is the wrong number to rely on. Take account of the temperature and how your shots are actually travelling, then allow for the ground conditions when you think about where they will finish.

Give yourself a proper warm-up, too. Prepare your body before the first tee so you are ready to move, rather than expecting your summer speed from a cold start. A warm-up helps you prepare; it does not guarantee that every lost yard comes back.

2. Hitting the ground before the ball

In summer, firm turf can sometimes disguise a poor strike. The club catches the ground early, bounces a little and still reaches the ball. Soft, wet ground is less forgiving: the club digs in and loses speed before it gets to the ball.

With an iron, I want the sequence to be ball first, turf afterwards. The lowest point of the swing arc is beyond the ball; the first mark in the turf is where the club enters the ground, which is a different checkpoint. Looking at the divot helps you check ground entry without pretending it measures the whole arc.

The line drill for ball-first contact

On a practice area where marking is permitted, spray a white line on the grass. If you are using a mat, a chalk line gives you a reference instead.

Start without a ball:

1. Address the line as though a ball were sitting on it.
2. Make a practice swing and try to strike the ground just beyond the line, on the target side.
3. Look at where the mark begins. Initially, focus on that task rather than several body movements.

My first rehearsal catches the turf well past the line. I then bring the entry closer. The aim is not to take a divot as far forward as possible; the line gives you a useful reference for controlling where contact starts.

Once you have a feel for it, put a ball on the line. Make a rehearsal, hit the shot, then inspect the turf. In my demonstration, I clip the front, target-side edge of the line and the divot is beyond it. That is the feedback I want. If the divot starts behind the line, you have caught the ground before the ball.

Use a hip-shift cue if you need it

If you keep catching the ground early, you may need a movement cue as well as the line. One fault I see is starting down with very little shift towards the target and staying on the back foot. That can leave ground contact too far back.

Here I use roughly four to five inches of lower-body shift as a coaching reference. Focus on moving towards the target and checking the strike, rather than trying to copy a precise hip measurement.

The useful feel is move the hips towards the target from the top, then swing through. Check whether that helps your actual contact at the line, rather than chasing a number on its own.

Check your lead hip with Swing Coach

I use Swing Coach to add positional feedback to the strike drill. In the custom feedback settings, select Lead Hip at Impact and isolate that checkpoint. In this setup, I place the phone straight ahead, face-on, about eight feet away.

I deliberately make a poor swing without the targetward shift, letting my left hip move back. The spoken feedback is “Lead hip at impact back by six.” Use that as positional feedback, not an inch measurement to copy.

On the next attempt, I move my hips towards the target from the top and swing through. The strike is decent, and the feedback screen reads “Lead Hip In Zone at Impact.” That is feedback on this hip checkpoint, rather than proof that every part of the swing is fixed. The app gives lead-hip position feedback, while the line and turf show where ground contact begins. Hip position is not a direct measurement of foot pressure or a guarantee of ball-first contact.

Use the line to practise contact, and try Swing Coach if you want positional feedback alongside that practice.

3. Playing firm bunkers like fluffy sand

Wet winter sand can become firm and compact. A shallow splash-shot action may let the club bounce off the surface and blade the ball, or leave you struggling to clear the lip.

First, pay attention to the lie and what you feel as you take your normal stance. Do not deliberately test the sand during a round. Rule 12.2b distinguishes taking a stance from prohibited testing and restricts touching sand with the club before the stroke.

In my practice demonstration after overnight rain in San Diego, the dropped ball sits on a firm surface with little give. That demonstration illustrates the conditions; it is not a sand-testing routine to copy during play.

For this shot, I want a steeper descent so the club can enter the sand rather than skip up from it. The club still enters the sand behind the ball. The ball-first instruction in the fairway section does not apply to this bunker shot.

For my approximately 20-yard shot towards the yellow flag, I make these adjustments:

• Keep weight on the left leg, which is my lead leg as a right-handed golfer.
• Leave the clubface open, but less open than I would for light, fluffy sand.
• Take the club a little more outside and up, rather than simply swinging along the body line.
• Use the wrists and keep enough speed: the club still has to work through sand.

I am trying to encourage a downward entry behind the ball, get it onto the green and leave myself a putt. Be prepared for more release than a soft, high splash shot; getting out with control matters more than demanding a perfect stop.

My actual shot comes out with some spin. I can still feel the club wanting to bounce, so this does not eliminate the challenge. The steeper action gives me a better chance of controlling that compact-sand shot.

4. Using the same chip and landing spot

When a green is softer and slower, your usual chip may grab and stop much sooner. Good contact matters, but the decision I want to work on here is which club to use and where to land the ball. If strike is your main problem, start with our chipping tips for cleaner contact before changing the landing spot.

My example is about 25 yards to a back flag, with plenty of green available. In summer, I would commonly use a 54-degree wedge and land it about a third of the way onto the green, then let it release. On this softer surface, that same landing spot with that club could leave me well short.

You have two options. The fractions below belong to this example; they are not fixed carry-to-roll ratios for every green.

Option 1: Carry the wedge farther

If you are confident controlling a longer carry, keep the 54-degree wedge and move the landing spot farther onto the green, closer to the hole. In this example, I move from roughly one-third to roughly two-thirds of the way on.

Look at the new spot and make rehearsals that match the shot needed to reach it. Do not rehearse the old, shorter chip and then expect a different landing point.

I land my attempt a little too far on, and it finishes about six feet past the hole. There is hardly any release. It is not a perfect attempt, but it shows why the landing decision has to account for the softer green.

Option 2: Use less loft and more roll

If carrying the ball close to the hole feels less reliable, choose a nearer landing spot and change the club. It is easier to land the ball towards the front of the green than to pitch it all the way up there with a lot of speed.

I swap the 54-degree wedge for a 9-iron. You can also try an 8-iron or 7-iron. The lower-lofted club gives a lower flight and more release, so I can keep the landing spot nearer, roughly a third of the way onto this green.

My 9-iron lands towards the front, releases more and finishes about four feet past. Both options have worked here. That does not make the 9-iron automatically better: choose the shot you can control, then watch how it lands and releases on the surface in front of you.

5. Starting without calibrating putting pace

If you want to reduce three-putts, distance control is a useful place to start. Winter greens can be slower, and I want you to get a feel for the actual pace before you head out, rather than discover it on your first long putt.

The 15, 20, 25-foot pace drill

On the practice green at The Grand, I set out three distances: 15 feet, 20 feet and 25 feet. The target is the fringe. I want to roll each ball as close to that edge as I can.

Start at 15 feet, then move back to 20 and 25. For this exercise, concentrate on pace rather than trying to hole a putt or perfect its line. Adjust the length of the stroke to send the ball the required distance. If the greens feel slower, allow a slightly longer backswing.

My first attempt goes a little past the fringe, but I am fairly happy with it. The second finishes a similar distance. The final one is too pacey. That last putt tells me I need a little more calibration.

Look for predictable finishing distances as you move between the stations. For more on controlling putting distance with stroke length, keep that same feedback in mind. Once you are playing, you still need to read the line; the fringe drill simply isolates pace during practice.

Take the adjustments into your next round

Before you play, warm up, check what your shots carry and spend time finding the pace of the practice green. During the round, choose your club, bunker action and chip for the conditions you actually have. Use the line drill in practice when wet-weather iron contact is costing you shots.

If you are looking for practice equipment, browse our training-aid range and choose an aid for the part of your game you are working on.

For in-person coaching, explore our Me and My Golf golf schools. You can also find out about the Full Swing KIT launch monitor or visit The Grand Golf Club, our home club in San Diego.