I hate when golf shops mess with their simulator before releasing a new driver...

[Bullitt5339]

I average 300 yards off the tee.....................

If I take all my drives out except for those 2 that had a good tailwind, downhill, and rolled 40 yards...... I am condidered a long driver in my group, and I only average 245-255 off the tee. That doesn't take in account the couple bad shots per round off the tee, if I factored those in, it would probably be closer to 220 average.

[kfowler]

Shanks - While I agree with what you're saying that people think they can hit it further than they actually can, we need to stop using PGA pro averages as examples. Pro's have commented time after time how they throttle back on the their drives. You can really see the contrast when they have a drivable par 4 with little risk. I would say the majority of PGA pros can average 300+ if they wanted to. The new groove rule should also make that average go down even more.

[Shanks A Million]

Shanks - While I agree with what you're saying that people think they can hit it further than they actually can, we need to stop using PGA pro averages as examples. Pro's have commented time after time how they throttle back on the their drives. You can really see the contrast when they have a drivable par 4 with little risk. I would say the majority of PGA pros can average 300+ if they wanted to. The new groove rule should also make that average go down even more.

"Most PGA tour pros", at least in your example, are the ones they show on TV going for it. They show them for a reason, who want's to see tour pros hit an iron off of the tee at those par 4s? The TV announcers rarely will tell you that a tour pro has hit his driver 257 yards. They do, however, mention it when someone blasts one 334.

This is confusion between "average" and "perceived." For example, do you realize that Yugoslavia lost more soldiers in WW-II than the United States, The United Kingdom, Italy, France, or Poland? This is something most Americans would not perceive. We perceive our own involvement in the war as being much, much larger than it was. And in that same vain, we also perceive that every American solider had an M1 Garand, a Thompson, or a .45. Again, not true. There were a million more M1 Carbines than there were Garands, and the Springfield was nearly as common to find. The Thompson and .45 were incredibly hard to find, and treasured by the soldiers who had them. If a soldier had a handgun, it was often one from home, revolvers being common. So, perception and average are two different things entirely.