Crush the ball when driving

Being a senior golfer, I get a kick out of watching younger golfers trying to clobber their ball on the drive. The result usually is they drive the ball left into the woods or off to the right into the other fairway and it reflects badly on their score. I once was a younger golfer and use to make the same mistake as these younger golfers make.

I'm almost 67 years old and was golfing with a golfer 23 years younger than myself yesterday. We played 9 holes and he only hit one fairway on his drive whereas I only missed one fairway and ended up beating him by six strokes for the 9 holes even though we both teed off from the same tee boxes.

Conclusion - I'd rather hit the ball 200 or so yards and be on the fairway, than hit it 250 yards into the woods, etc.

Every now and then I get to enjoy one of those. Usually when that happens the moisture on the fairway has dissipated and the winds are calm which affords me the luxury of some good ball roll

I'd rather be 300 with wind and 60 yards of roll, too! :-D

I hit a 280 yd drive once. It went right and landed on the cart path... concrete I might add, and bounced and bounced and bounced.... and finally, when the cart path turned right it had its final bounce and ended up about 20 yds from the green on a 310 yd par 4!

I'd give up a few yards to avoid penalties. Unfortunately, there's seldom a choice. I've tried swinging easier and have tried using a 3w where I normally use the driver. Neither method has proved successful.

As far as the choice between 250 in the rough vs 225 in the fairway... sure, that would be great. As long as the 250 yd drive results in a good lie and not behind a tree. Again, not like some of us have that choice. For my game, any drive that remains in play is successful (as long as it isn't a #@^i pop up). If I get an extra 25 yards, a decent lie and a good look at the green, that's icing on the cake.

All we can do is try to develop the best driver swing we can with what our minds and bodies are capable of developing.

I started golfing in my mid-20s and can still remember one time at a local muni when a friend and I got paired with a couple of guys in their 70s.  My buddy and I were both new golfers, still swung for the fence on every shot and were spraying the ball all over the place.  Both of the old guys had these slow, easy swings and only hit the ball 170-180 yards or so, but in the fairway almost every time.  We were rolling our eyes on the first couple tees, thinking it was going to be a long day with these old duffers.  As it turned out, they kicked the dog crap out of us that day.  I'm glad they didn't suggest a "friendly little wager" after hitting their first tee shots, because my friend and I were both dumb, inexperienced and cocky enough that we would have jumped all over it.

(We weren't hitting it 250 and in the rough - we were in the trees, in the bushes, in the water, out of bounds...those old guys could have teed off with 9 irons and probably still beat us!)

I like my 294 avg

I'd take the 36% fairway's hit as well.

Pretty much this.

If a golfer only hits the ball 250 off the tee, I'd say make sure you are playing the right tees. If you come up to a long par 4, if you pull 3-wood you better make sure it ends up in the fairway way more often than a driver. Just because a golfer takes driver out of the bag doesn't mean they will hit the fairway.

Yup, and a shot that's 30 or more yards shorter and still in the weeds/trees/rough is going to make the next shot that much harder. If I'm having trouble and hitting hooks I'm going to be in trouble if I hit driver, hybrid, or 4 iron. If I drop any further down in clubs I may as well not even tee off because I'll be so far back that the next shot is going to require a long iron or hybrid that's just as likely to end up hooking.

For a lot of golfers, it's a matter of aspiration.

Four years in as a golfer, I'm not ready to accept an average drive of 200 yards. Someday I'd like to be able to play from the tips and compete with the better players in my area. Mishit balls are simply a part of the process of trying to build a swing capable of that.

At some point, I will no longer improve. Then it is a matter of managing what I'm capable of and what I'm not.

based on my recent absolute total frustration trying to chop the ball out of the rough ad nauseum, I would take 200 in the short grass EVERY TIME.   Hitting a golf ball out of the rough requires some sort of mysterious technique that I clearly do not possess...