Re: Driving Distance
Originally Posted by
Devo 
Never posted in here before due to fear of all the chatter and doubt but yesterdays round had two drives I must talk about.
First drive was a 270 carry into a small wind on a par 5.
Second was almost flying it on the green of a 325 yrd par 4, which caused the group on the green to turn and wave. The drive flew into the hill leading up to the green, got no roll and was less than 20 yrds to the green.
Before anyone goes and gets all technical on me, last summer I had my swing speed stay in the 120s while testing a few drivers at my course's demo day so according to all the talk being thrown around these numbers should make sense to people.
It's no problem to say you hit some shots that long, hell, we all do. I've nuked drives a mile, my longest ever was 326
carry (extreme tailwind, downhill). But it's average we're talking about. As a 12 handicap, I would venture to guess that while you hit a good number of drives very well, if you averaged out all of your drives, your average with that swing speed would be around 240-265, maybe 270 if you're really catching it good. But most 12 handicaps, even with high swing speeds, often fail to strike the center of the face, and fail to deliver the club to the ball on the right path. Those are more important to driving distance than swing speed, and they're almost directly related to handicap.
In all my years, I've never seen a ballstriker who had a swing that could deliver the club squarely and on plane play to anything more than about a 5 handicap. A lot of people mention short game, but it's just false. Chipping is directly related to the full swing, and most players' putting is also related to (similar to) their full swing. If you can deliver the ball on plane, and on center, chipping is fairly easy. You'll find almost no players with a great swing who go to the chipping green and flub and duff chips, save for some people with mental blocks.