Rajat Mittal, left, a Johns Hopkins mechanical engineering professor, and Neda Yaghoobian, a visiting postdoctoral scholar, devised a computer simulation to determine how wind conditions affect the of trajectory of a golf ball in flight. Photo by Will Kirk/Johns Hopkins University.

Rajat Mittal, left, a Johns Hopkins mechanical engineering professor, and Neda Yaghoobian, a visiting postdoctoral scholar, devised a computer simulation to determine how wind conditions affect the of trajectory of a golf ball in flight. Photo by Will Kirk/Johns Hopkins University.

Prof. Rajat Mittal and Neda Yaghoobian, a postdoctoral visiting scholar on his team, have created a computer model to help unravel the wicked wind conditions that test the world’s greatest golfers at the Masters Tournament on the Augusta National Golf Club course each April. The system is based on computational fluid dynamics and incorporates wind conditions and information on tree canopies to evaluate and predict how the wind’s direction and speed are likely to affect the accuracy of a golf shot on any particular hole. Mittal and Yaghoobian also used computer simulations to explore the impact of factors such as spin and launch angle on the flight of the golf ball.

For their proof-of-concept research, the team collected data from the famed par-3 12th hole at Augusta. Though the hole is the shortest on the course, it is subject to unpredictable winds that swirl over and around the surrounding tree canopies. It also features a shallow, well-protected green—fronted by a water hazard and bracketed by three sand traps—that often punishes errant shots. For these reasons, a 2012 Golf Digest article about Augusta National’s 12th hole dubbed it “the scariest 155 yards in golf.” The story describes how even the world’s top golfers often misjudge the wind conditions, leaving shots short into the water or sometimes overshooting the green clear into a different golf course next door.

“Our primary goal was to develop a computational tool that could integrate all of these kinds of information to see if it can help predict how the wind will influence a golf ball’s flight on a difficult hole like this one,” Mittal said. “This level of analysis has not been available to golfers. But in our early work, we’ve been able to demonstrate proof-of-concept that it is possible to generate these kind of detailed predictions about a particular golf hole.”

Mittal and Yaghoobian have obtained a provisional patent covering the computational tool developed for this project. To learn more about the tool, click here.