Hinging or not hinging?

I have a friend that drives the ball so far it's unreal. On a good day his drives carry well past 300 yards. I've always been taught to hinge my wrists in the back swing and have a 90 degree angle when my arms are parallel to the ground. Is this generally thought to be "ideal" or have I understood it wrong all along?

I've always been a terrible driver of the ball -  and seeing my friend have virtually no wrist hinge (initially, at least) and still hitting the ball so far has genuinely made me think about quitting golf. Could it be that I mess up my swing by actively thinking about hinging the wrists?

Here's a picture of his takeway:

looks like its just a nice 'wide' takeaway to me?

similar to this......

need a picture of the top of the swing to verify if he has a lack of wrist hinge really.

i would doubt it very much though if he's hitting it 300.

Ha ha ha.  All the courses I play the yellows or golds are in front of the reds.

Hinging? She hinges at the parallel position, and up at the top of her backswing her wrists are fully hinged. I'll bet your friend's are too.

Better as in capable of going low, not having to rely on flawless short game to score well.

Heh, the yellow tees are the middle tees on this course, approximately 6 600 yards.

It's really easy to lower ones handicap by a substantial amount by occasionally "going low." The fact is that if your handicaps are the same, then he's not really better than you at all. If he beats you by a lot occasionally, then all it means is that he loses to you more often. That doesn't make him better.

There's no lack of hinge, he just doesn't do it the way I've always been instructed. I'm starting to think (and hope) that consciously hinging my wrists has caused my casting problem on the downswing. Now that I'm trying to copy this swing my Trackman numbers are a lot better - but I guess I wanna know whether I'm hurting my swing with a quick fix rather than really improving it by having the feeling of no hinge.

What do you mean by some should do it sooner, some later? Is there a typical player with some sort of tendency that might benefit from hinging later rather than doing it early?

To me that looks a lot different because I see her actively hinging whereas my friend's swing looks like he's actively trying to stay wide / not hinge. But as I now see in the photo at the top of the backswing, there is wrist hinge. Standing next to him it doesn't look like it. I'll have to ask him if it's ok to post his swing here, he doesn't even know I'm posting the photos :)

Yeah, I guess I beat him from time to time but the longer the course, the more difficult it is to me. Lets put it this way: if one of us was to make it to a professional tour one day, I'd put my money on him because he has a better swing... Unless someone now confirms to me a backswing like he has is a bad thing going forward.

its a real tough one, as that 'wide' move that good players can master has poor players (me!) sway off the ball quite often.

I guess that when you hinge has everything to do with your swing plane and and how consciously you try and set?????

Vs

no way should you fight nature in my opinion, if you try to stretch the takeaway and swing wide I think that causes all sorts of problems, I hinge the wrists very early as did seve as does danny willett, tiger swings wide adam scott wide, top players do it there own way I don't think its a massive issue to focus on.Timing, tempo, rhythm far more important, weight shift important, your mate may bomb it but that's natural talent you cant teach that, youll never match him, but is he straight.