Driving Distance

[Shanks A Million]

To bad you live in Florida for i would take you on that challenge. I doubt i can send you video of the proof, you probably say i put a golf ball there. I can always get someone to sign a piece of paper saying i hit it that far, with a picture of my GPS showing the distance, but i doubt you will believe it.

I want to see a video of your swing then. That's proof enough. Tee up and hit 10 balls on the range, no cuts or edits.

[Cussin hacker]

Hey hey now things are heating up. Just for the record I've never claimed to be one of the long ballers here. I have just defended some .....I'm getting out while I still can!! LOL

[saevel25]

Fine, will do... I will go out tomorrow after work, bring my camera out, take video's of my golf swing, post them up here. I will write down how each drive turned out, not distance, but shot direction (ie pull push cut, hook draw, ect...). I will post them up tomorrow night here, which will prove i wont edit them. No way i can edit 10 swings, in 5 hours, not to mention with only windows movie makers on my computer ;b

[Kieran123]

I think Shanks a Million will explode if hes proven wrong....

[playfromthetips11]

i dont really know if the swing speed give an amatuer, who is inconsistant, an accurate distance estimator. of course most of the launch monitors and simulators are in the stores to sell drivers so they are probably off too. i do know that at a ball fitting and a club fitting on separate occasions at different locations my swing speed was around 105. i am a big guy with a lot of power, but the SkyCaddie GPS tells me i hit my drives about 240-250. that doesnt seem to jive with the swing speed number but what do i know? i am sure i have tons of backspin and my trajectory is wack as well. for all of the high handicap 300 averages out there, get a gps and mark your ball, hit it, walk to where it ends up and read it and weep.

[James_Black]

Fine, will do... I will go out tomorrow after work, bring my camera out, take video's of my golf swing, post them up here. I will write down how each drive turned out, not distance, but shot direction (ie pull push cut, hook draw, ect...). I will post them up tomorrow night here, which will prove i wont edit them. No way i can edit 10 swings, in 5 hours, not to mention with only windows movie makers on my computer ;b

please make a full thread for it too, a lot of people are sick of this thread and won't see it

[saevel25]

If you know your swing speed, the average smash factor is 1.35 to 1.40, for sanity i will take 1.35, because most people here are pessimistic about distance, you take 105 mph, thats about 140-145 mph ball speed. There is a nifty excel file online, google Golfball in advanced search with filetype requiremens Microsoft Excel (.xls).

sections.asme.org/canaveral/Special/golf/GOLFBALL.XLS

It does a 4th order integration to find how far a golf ball goes, carry distance. I would give its probably not truely accurate to real world, but its a good guestimation. i would say +/- 10-15 yards.

If i go with 145 mph ball speed, No wind, standard golf ball, sea level, 80 degrees out, looking at 230-235 yards. add in about 10 yards of roll, your looking at 240-245, not to bad..

So your abour right, whats your ball flight like, goes out low then shoots upward on you?

[soloredd]

According to SkyCaddie, for me, I'm 220-230 when I get to the ball. So, obviously there is a lot of roll on my drive because I don't think I carry it very far. Monday I had a drive of 240 and then later had one of 193 (popped that sucker up like a baseball). I never understood the fascination with driving distance, though. If it's some friendly competition, fine, but I rather the damn thing be in the fairway.

I play with a friend who hits it 270 on average, he's around a 2 handicap. Absolutely crushes the ball, it's really impressive. But even he has said his driving is more erratic than mine. It's funny when I hit it 230 and he's out 280 and he's angry because he has to navigate a much tougher shot to the green. Of course, he's playing blues and I play whites. And he's able to make that 2nd shot even from the rough while I am HOPING to make it hahahaha!

[Arrogant_Kid]

There's too much testosterone in here........

[saevel25]

At 25 years old i still got plenty of it

[RC]

Something interesting for those of us that are older (and gives you young guys something to shoot for)... Mike Austin holds the record for the longest drive in competition. At age 64, he hit a drive that measured 515 yards in Las Vegas at the 1974 U.S. National Senior Open!!!! (must have skipped down the cart path or something crazy.)

[deronsizemore]

Something interesting for those of us that are older (and gives you young guys something to shoot for)... Mike Austin holds the record for the longest drive in competition. At age 64, he hit a drive that measured 515 yards in Las Vegas at the 1974 U.S. National Senior Open!!!! (must have skipped down the cart path or something crazy.)

That's difficult for my brain to process. 515 yards is stupid but even stupider (yes I said stupider

) is the fact that he did it with a 43.5" steel shafted persimmon wood driver and balata ball. The guy either got a crap ton of roll or is an alien. To hit it 515 without a lot of roll you'd have to have like a 200mph swing speed which is close to what Jamie Sadlowski's ball speed is.

[Shanks A Million]

Something interesting for those of us that are older (and gives you young guys something to shoot for)... Mike Austin holds the record for the longest drive in competition. At age 64, he hit a drive that measured 515 yards in Las Vegas at the 1974 U.S. National Senior Open!!!! (must have skipped down the cart path or something crazy.)

No cart path, it flew only about 430, but hit a very hard spot on the front of the green on a par 4, bounded over the green, and rolled down the back. It was accomplished at a high altitude with a 27 mph tailwind. Austin was one of the longest drivers of all time, and his swing was incredibly powerful. He slid his hips farther than anyone I've ever seen, and he was like a giant rubberband. He was fond of driving balls through a phone book.

[RC]

Glad to hear it was not a cart path type shot. I know Austin was pretty famous as a basher of the golf ball, but it still defies imagination to think he did this with the old equipment and ball. He must have been an amazing athlete to hit such a drive.

[laxbballgolf]

I still have never measured my drives with a laser or GPS, but the other day I think I got the best estimate for my drives I've had so far.

I was having a great day off the tee, and I hit 5 of what I would consider to be my best drives: gave it a full rip, found the sweet spot, high slight push draw, found the center of the fairway. All of these were on different holes of Skylinks Golf Course in Long Beach, and I measured each one based on the course yardage markers. Low was 238, high was 303, 2 were exactly 283, and one was 268. There was a decent wind that day, and the short drive was dead into the wind, and one of the 283 yarders was directly with the wind. Oddly, the 303 yarder was kind of sideways to the wind (but the wind was helping a bit as well), and I can't really explain why it went that far (it wasn't significantly downhill, either). I would honestly say that each one of these drives felt basically the same to me, and I attribute the differences in distance to wind, uphill/downhill, and bounces/luck. In fairness, Skylinks is a pretty firm and fast course.

So, I guess that puts my average for perfectly struck drives at 275, but I will knock that down to 265 or 270 just to be safe. Now, as far as average driving distance goes (including mishits and everything), who knows!

I'm 23, 6'1, and athletic, and I would take 270 yard drives every day if I could.

[Bump-n-MI]

I think Shanks a Million will explode if hes proven wrong....

Don't worry, he won't be proven wrong. We may see several approach 300 but we will also see several snap hooks or banana slices that go as far left or right as they do straight.

[Dr. Strangeclub]

No cart path, it flew only about 430...

Only 430. sigh. I guess at 64 he was losing it a little, huh?

I hit one about that far in 1965 or so, at the Naval Air Station course in Norfolk, Va. It was a par 5 that bordered a runway. Around the perimeter of the runway was a marked out "road", where people drove cars. I recall the hole being 520 yards or so, and I hit a high, pull hook over the fence OB onto the parallel roadway. It bounded merrily along for a while, then a blue, two-tone, 1956 Chevy BelAire hit it going about 50. Bumpers back there at the dawn of time were made from left over sheet metal used to make the WW II tanks, I think, unlike the plastic and foam jobs they have today, so there was some very good compression. Back over the fence it came, just off the green, about 30 feet from the hole. I ALMOST chipped it in for an albatross! Can't believe I didn't keep that ball! I could have used it to replace one ball in each dozen box, so it could teach the others how it's done, then on to the next class of 11.

[saevel25]

HAHA, nice..

I liked that one commercial, were the two sons just destroy the ball, and there dad hit one down the cart path past theirs. What i hate is when courses put golf cars so close to the green that if you miss the green just a bit the miss is then doubled. Nothing like finding your ball 40 yards behind the green with a big black scuff mark on it.