Hitting the links? Learn the many ways weather impacts the game of golf

With this being the week of the 2023 Open Championship at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, Merseyside, England, we thought it would be a good time to talk about weather and golf.
When thinking of the two, the first thing to come to mind might be the danger of holding up a golf club during a thunderstorm. But that's oversimplifying things. How does the roll of the putt change when there is an early morning dew covering the greens? How does temperature and humidity impact the game?
University of Oklahoma meteorology student and avid golfer Peyton Galyean joins the podcast this week to talk about how weather and golf are connected. She also shares how the Texas hurricanes of her youth impacted her path into weather and the story of how ABC Chief Meteorologist Ginger Zee became her mentor.
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About the Across the Sky podcast
The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team:
Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia.
Episode transcript
Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:
Welcome this week’s Across the Sky Podcast. I’m Kirsten Lang here with the Tulsa World, here with my colleagues Sean Sublette and Matt Holiner. Joe Martucci off this week, but he'll be back next week. And our guest this week, a very impressive young lady. Her name's Peyton Galyean. She is a University of Oklahoma student and an avid golfer and has some really interesting stuff to talk to us about when it comes to the two she calls it her two loves.
Today, we have a very special guest. Her name is Peyton Galyean, and she is an Oklahoma University of Oklahoma student in her junior year. She's studying meteorology, but then also an avid golfer. And I got to meet her at the AMS Broadcast conference, a couple of weeks ago back in Phoenix. Peyton, you gave an awesome speech when you were there and it was so nice to meet you.
And we're just so glad that you're here on our podcast with us today. So welcome. Yes, thank you for having me. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about your background because it's kind of a neat one. You know, just kind of how you got into meteorology and golf and and the two loves how you brought them together.
So I'm originally from Houston, Texas, and I grew up on Galveston Bay and 28 Hurricane Ike made landfall in Galveston and I was seven at the time. And I didn't really know what was going on. We don't learn about hurricanes in school, and my grandmother lives on Galveston Bay. The storm surge produced five feet of water in her home.
And at the time, my dad was transitioning from being a law enforcement officer to the city emergency management coordinator. So I just started tagging along with him to different work events. And through that I was able to meet so many National Weather Service officials, broadcast meteorologists throughout the Houston area. And I realized I wanted to be a meteorologist.
And as I got older, I really fell in love with broadcast. Being able to have that connection with your viewers, especially being through multiple hurricanes Ike Harvey, Rita, just to name a few, you know, what people are going through. And you can really have that connection. Like, I know what it's like to have everything, you know, sit on the side of the curb.
It's going to get better, I promise. But at the same time, my dad also introduced me to golf. I was in middle school when I started playing golf. I played seventh grade in eighth grade. And then I got to high school and I made my varsity team and I still don't really know what I was doing, but I started taking it more seriously.
And then I started getting scholarship offers. But I always knew I wanted to go to O.U. Is O.U. Has such an incredible meteorology program. And so I was kind of in the in between, like, do I still continue playing golf? That's something I really love. But I've always wanted to be a meteorologist. I decided to go play golf for a junior college in Oklahoma just to kind of help with the financial aspect of it, get some credits out of the way that would transfer.
I applied for a semester, Seminole State College, in the fall of 2019 in just realized college golf was not what I thought it would be. So I decided to transfer to O.U. And then a pandemic hit eight weeks later. So right before the pandemic happened, I had joined the club golf team at O.U. Because I didn't want to give it up completely.
Even though I had a bad experience. I had to close that door with my previous school and I wanted a new opportunity. And then with the pandemic happening, it just never went anywhere. But soon after, I realized I needed a job to kind of help pay for school as well. So I applied to golf courses at Norman, and I've been working at one and more for about three years now, and I absolutely love it.
And that's when I kind of started realizing whether has such an impact on golf that people don't realize, like, yes, it's an outdoor sport. Yes, you have to deal with all the lightning protocols, but when you realize that if there's mourning, do on the ground, your ball's not going to roll as far as tiny water droplets are going to have an impact on your ball, especially when you're putting That's why you need to clean your ball Every so often in the wind is a huge, crucial factor.
And I was like, No one's doing this. So on a whim I just decided to start posting up on social media and the golf teams are, Oh, you, the coaches loved it. They reached out to me. They're like, I love how you're doing forecasts for all our tournaments and it's something I started doing for fun, but I've kind of thought about this.
It's kind of like my dream job. There is no one that does this for a living. Sure, there's private meteorologists that do this behind the scenes, but how cool would it be to work for the PGA or Lib Tour or the Golf Channel and be able to go to all these tournaments, the browser up and not only explain to them, but the people watching at home how the weather's impacting their scores?
Wow. That that's amazing. I had a colleague in in college. He did a couple of summer interns. This is back in the early nineties with the PGA. He did a lot of forecasting for the PGA on tour with them for a while. I learned a lot about golf and weather and obviously those big impacts when kind of obvious admittedly I would not have thought about to do first thing in the morning for the early tee times.
But what other things are out there that aren't immediately obvious? Obviously, you want to get out of the way when there's lightning showing up, but outside from wind, lightning, rain, do what other kinds of environmental things are out there in the weather that that play into the game that may not be as obvious.
So temperature so when it's actually above 95 degrees, your ball can travel farther. And when it's below either 55 or 45 degrees, your ball won't travel as far just due to the heat transfer between your club base and the ball, which not a lot of people realize when it's super hot outside. I notice my drives are a lot longer, my iron shots are a lot longer and when it's colder, I always thought it was just my body trying to conserve heat and everything and try and be more stiff.
But it's actually just the air temperature not allowing the ball to travel as far you say.
Is that more of a contact or is that more of the air moving to the the density of the ball, moving through the density air, or is that more of a control like with the club face and the ball?
It's a little bit of both because you rely on that contact to give you all the energy to travel farther. And when there's not enough energy being transferred, you don't have as much energy to travel through the air.
And then, you know, we've talked about this with baseball, too, I guess, as humidity comes into play as well. If the humidity levels are higher, I'm guessing the ball is probably going to travel higher, just like we talk about home runs going up and there's higher humidity levels in addition to the higher temperatures. I guess humidity plays a factor as well.
Yes, Like yesterday when I was at work, I was on the car and there was a kids tournament and I was just noticing how high their shots were traveling. And even when I'm on the range, how high my ball is going, especially being from Houston where it's always humid, my shots are so incredibly high and I try to control it and get it back down.
Because when your ball is higher in the air, you don't have as much control of where it's going. Whereas if you keep it kind of level, you have more of that control. And Peyton, what about what about altitude? How does that affect your game? So I went to Colorado last summer and I played golf and I have never hit a ball farther.
I don't know if it was just luck or if it was the altitude. I never really looked into it, but I was pleasantly shocked by how far by drives were going, how high I was getting this into the air. So I believe altitude has played a role in it. I haven't really thought about it, especially I grew up under sea level in Oklahoma is relatively flat, but exactly like we know and I feel teens, when they go and play in Mexico City, they go to Denver to get their body immune to it.
I think that altitude also does take a toll on your body itself, not just the sport.
So what do you want to do after your you graduate? I mean, you doing a lot of weather communications on social media. Do you think you want to continue to go in to weather communications or do you think you might skew more toward the golf forecasting and getting in with with the golf organization? Have you made that decision yet?
Are you still kind of keeping it all out there?
I don't really know. I'm kind of just putting my feet into everything right now since I still have time out. Do you? I'm minoring in broadcast meteorology. Local news will always be there. I'd love to go back to the coast and talk about hurricanes. I'd love to stay in Oklahoma just with the severe weather here. But if the opportunity did present itself to excuse me, say, do some affiliate work and kind of freelancing with NBC Sports and the Golf Channel in the 2 hours, I would not turn that down.
You said that your dad was an emergency manager. Is he still doing that now as well? No, he retired when I graduated high school. Both my parents retired from law enforcement and moved to Oklahoma. My mom's family is from the state, so they decided to come here and live out retirement life. Are you the first in your family to pursue the meteorology track?
Yes. My brother is a project manager in the Dallas Fort Worth area, but I'm the weather nut. All right. Well, we will be back right after this break with more with Peyton Galli. And you're listening to Across the Sky.
Welcome back. We are here with Peyton Galion and University of Oklahoma student, an avid golfer. Peyton, we're just so glad to have you on today. You know, I wanted to talk with you, too. When we met at the AMS broadcast conference, it was pretty quickly obvious that you and Ginger Zee from ABC have a pretty good relationship. She even had pictures of you in her speech that she was giving, which was pretty cool.
So tell us a little bit about how that started and you know, kind of how it's going. So when I was in middle school, when I realized I wanted to do broadcast meteorology, you know, in the Houston area, it's a top ten market. There wasn't a lot of females and yes, there was females every station. Now obviously the presence is a lot better represented.
But I was like, there's not really someone I could look up to that looks like me. And I remember coming home from school and the more tornado had just happened and I turn on my TV and the Houston stations were taking ABC coverage from Oklahoma City and I saw gender and I was like, That's who I want to be.
She's a meteorologist. She's out in the field. She is reporting on what just happened. And so I just I wanted to be just like her. She was my idol. And then after my freshman year of high school, my family sort of planning a family vacation to New York. And at that time, ginger ale on Dancing with the Stars.
And so my mom, on a whim, I didn't even know this. She emailed her. I was like, Hey, my daughter loves you. Basically, she wants you just like you. She wants to go to, Oh, you study meteorology, she wants you on a broadcast. And she responded. She was like, Yes, Dancing with the Stars will be over at that point.
I can't wait to meet her. And so it was June 6th of 2016. We went, we are part of the outside audience for GMA, and Ginger came outside and she came up to me and she was like, Are you Peyton? And I was like, shell shocked. I was like, OMG. And I had a sign I made and it said, Hey, Ginger Cocker caged next to Coco, which is Houston.
Galveston, right, are to New York. So that showed that I traveled from Houston to New York to be there and she signed it. And I still have it today, however many years later, seven years later. But what I thought would be just like a quick interaction turned into a mentorship the state and contact through it all. Harvey dumped 52 inches of rain in my hometown and threw out everything.
She was checking up on me. She's like, How's your family? How are you doing? How are how's your neighborhood? And I was just sending her pictures of everything. And once I got to college, she I had I was like, I just want to do journalism with a minor meteorology. And she was like, You want to do this so on.
Just stick with meteorology. It's going to be hard. I know it's hard. I've been through it, but you can do it. And so she's always been in my back pocket, just kind of pushing me and wanting me to succeed. And she is just someone I can talk to all the time. I texted her the other day all my news stuff we do nightly.
I send her everything and I get feedback from her in just knowing that she is such an advocate for women in STEM. The next generation of female meteorologists. She is someone I admire so much and I'm so excited and happy. I know her.
It is so wonderful to hear. She is tremendous and she has been a wonderful advocate, no question about that. I'm very happy to see somebody with her caliber at ABC. Let's go back a little bit. And you said that, you know, the hurricanes and your youth are really influenced. You do? Let's talk about that a little bit more.
Are there two or three, you know, specific events, regardless of which hurricane they were, that kind of are etched in your consciousness, that that kind of led you a little further down this path?
I would definitely say like in 2008 and Harvey in 2017, I just because it impacted me so much, my grandmother has a two story house on Galveston Bay and the entire first floor had to be gutted. And I remember there was a table that she had on the first floor and it had little angel statues because my grandfather had passed away the year before and at the table rose up and the five feet of water.
And then it went right back down to where it was. And none of the angel statues fell over. And we could see, like on the table, all the debris and like chip marks where water had been. And so that was something that stuck out to me. And you still see it like today, there's these random things that state and whether that it's just mind boggling.
But knowing Ike impacted me so much, my school district became one of the refuge school districts for all the Galveston kids to come to. We had to bring in portable buildings for the additional kids, even though my school took on water. And again, with Harvey, I woke up to a boat going down my street. Like, you don't see that on an everyday basis.
And just knowing I was out of school for so long, my school was damaged once again. Every school in the school district was damaged. So many of my friends and principals and even our superintendent, their house flooded and there was there was so much you could do, but not enough at the same time. And everyone was just really nice to one another.
Like it didn't matter where you came from, who you are, what you do, Everyone is just with one another and it sucks that it was a time of crisis, but seeing the aftereffects and going through that not one but multiple times just kind of makes hurricanes my favorite because everyone can talk about what they're like. But once you go through them and you're impacted by them, it's a different sort of feeling.
Yeah, you know, it's probably the one good thing about these hurricanes is the way people do come together after the event passes. You know, everybody, you know, it seems like there's so much division especially you get on social media and all the arguments and bickering, but it seems to suddenly go away when they're saying that everybody can unite and focus on and recover from.
Yeah, that is, you know, the silver linings. And people do seem to know out a little bit and are a little bit friendlier to each other. Bring it back to golf. I let's talk a little bit about, you know safety on the golf course. You know, of course when we're talking about thunderstorms but also we were talking about how good it is.
You know, when it's hot and humid, your ball will travel farther. But think about golf. And I think the especially for people who don't play regularly, I mean, if you're playing a full 18 holes, you are out in the heat and humidity for quite a while. So let's let's talk a little bit about safety on the golf course, what you're going to be doing.
So obviously lightning kind of the rule of thumb is 8 to 10 miles within the last lightning strike. Have the 30 minute really because lightning strike outside of any thunderstorm and you don't want to be walking around with 14 metal sticks in Iraq, Let's just say, jeez, number one priority. But definitely the heat. I mean, yesterday, Oklahoma was in an excessive heat warning and I was on the car selling drinks yesterday.
And I was out there for hours and it was boring. Well, I had one of those towels around my neck to keep me cool, keep my neck cool. And I always wore those when I played. I'd have multiple and I'd switch them out after every few holes. And yesterday there was a tournament going on and so many kids were just dropping.
They could not keep up because walking 18 holes is hard. The stamina of your body has to have if you're carrying a £50 bag or yours in pushcart, you're a sheet of £50 bag. It's so much more toll on your body and especially in the dry heat, you don't really realize you're adding as much, which means you can get dehydrated a lot faster.
And walking 18 holes, that's about 4 to 5 hours of play. And if the pace of play is slower, that's an additional hour, making it six. And when you're outside for that long, it's crazy. I I'm not built up to as much as I used to, but when I was in high school, I was playing like ten tournaments a summer and it was no big deal to me at that point because I had paced myself so much.
I had been drinking so much water. It was usual for me, but so many tournaments. I would go to girls and boys would drop out just because their body couldn't handle it. And it's not that we're pushing our bodies so much in this heat. It's just we are preparing enough because, yes, especially right now that massive heat wave going on from Oklahoma City down to Dallas, Houston, Arizona, it's crazy.
Arizona's anything over close to 120 degrees. Now, El Paso's recording so many days above 100 degrees, it's just insane. And people don't think about the heat factor because they're like, oh, even though I'm driving a cart, it's fine. I was on a car yesterday for 6 hours and I was still sweating tremendously. I was downing water just to keep myself there and present, because then you deal with the mental side of golf, which is a whole nother spiraling event we can talk about.
But when you are having the ongoing effects of heat illness, your mind starts to function differently and then you can lead down that low and that will start affecting your game.
And I think the other thing that people forget about, you know, is when you're out on a golf course, there's usually not a lot of shade. There might be trees on the side, but where you are not going to get much shade. So, yeah, I the when it comes to heat, especially what we're dealing with this summer, I mean, I think you really can't underestimate it.
The amount of time that you are in the sun to the elements and you know it it it's definitely something that we we try and studies, you know, like the you know, when you start feeling the impacts, you know, you really got to, you know, hopefully you do have a car that would help rather than walking the void holes.
But you know, it just comes back to the general heat safety. If you can plan on, you know, playing in the early morning or the evening hours, that's going to be the way to go to avoid the hottest part of day when the sun is highest in the sky and yet keeping the water, the Gatorade handy and carry it with you and bring more than you think you're going to need.
I think that's the best advice.
And thanks so much for joining us. We really enjoyed having you online. And, you know, it was really awesome to hear a little bit too about weather and how it pertains to golf, because I think we all kind of learn something from that. So thanks so much for being here with us this week. We appreciate it. Yes. Thank you so much.
All right. And if anyone wants to follow you or get any golf updates, do you still do that on your social media? Yes, all my social media is my TikTok, my Instagram, my Twitter, my Facebook. It's w X, which stands for weather with Peyton. Perfect. All right. Well, thanks so much, Tatum. Thank you.
All right. Welcome back, guys. She was a real sweet girl, wasn't she? And she has got a very impressive, I think, future ahead of her with, you know, combining some of the two things that she loves and and just very smart.
She seems very forward thinking as well. I mean, she's she's doing a lot of weather communications, science communications, golf communications, showing how these things merge on her social media accounts. You know, she's already made very good contacts with Ginger Zee, who's doing fabulous work at ABC, very bright future for her, no question. I think when I see the younger professionals like this, it makes me feel good that science communications, whether communicate actions, impacts those kinds of things.
We're in good hands going forward.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I won't hold that against her too much that she's going to the University of Oklahoma. I went to the University of Texas at Austin and I met your love for you. So I was going to bite my tongue a little bit when she's talking about the IOU stuff, but they do have a good meteorology program. I'll acknowledge that it is a good school to go to for meteorology and I like that.
You know, she's into golf. I do. I wish I could play golf more often, if you like. Always So busy now, but I'm in Chicago the long winter. Well, it's the brain for playing golf a little bit, but I do love playing golf. You know, when the weather is nice, it is fantastic. You know, just go out there and play a round of golf.
But keep in mind, weather, safety, you know, when you hear that rumble of thunder, don't risk it. Don't try. They all just finish this hole. Now, it's not worth it because if you can hear thunder, you can get struck by lightning. So just go ahead. Go ahead to the clubhouse, grab yourself a drink, wait it out, and then wait 30 minutes after the last rumble thunder and then you can resume the game.
And of course, remember, they need safety as well. So it was it was a great chat with her. And even though she's a shooter, it helped.
But well, you know, as a Penn State or we also kind of have a love hate relationship with Oklahoma because we we understand that there are certain things they can do in Oklahoma that we can't do at Penn State. And we acknowledge that. But, you know, it's still Oklahoma. So sometimes I'm kind of with you. I have a lot of friends here, went to O.U.
So it's all good. And I've been in the National Weather Center. It's gorgeous. I mean, it is gorgeous straight up. It's a wonderful facility and it's a wonderful program.
The pain you say that.
It's a little painful. It's a little painful. But you know what? If I'm going to go study tornadoes, man, that that's that's where you go. It just is.
You know, I should have asked her to why she was so close to Bryan College Station growing up in Galveston right there. Texas A&M.
Mm. Yeah.
But she but she chose O.U. But I'm sure, you know, program wise, I mean, I don't you know, I'm sure that had something to do with it, but yeah, no, I going back to the light and safety to the thing that was kind of funny that she she's right is that, you know, you're walking around with much metal sticks in your in your hand.
So, you know, probably don't want to be out there but but it was great to have her on and and coming up next week.
After weather and golf, of course, we've got hurricane preparedness for homeowners. The oceans have also been crazy hot. We've heard a lot about that. I've got Zeke has father are from from multiple different agencies. He's climate scientist who does a lot of good work And looking at at the impacts of climate change in the oceans. Gardener Chase will be joining us in a few weeks.
Ocean coastal safety. We got football and he coming up. Doug Collins is going to join us from the Korey Stringer Institute to talk about that. So there's lots lots of good stuff coming up in the next few weeks.
That was good. And Joe will be back next week. I'm out on vacation next week, headed to Colorado with my my husband and my little kids. So I won't be here, but Joe will be back. So should be fun. All right. Well, thanks again for joining us this week on Across the Sky podcast. And we will catch you next time around.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.