Do any of you wear earplugs?

[JaredSS]

I hit a Cleveland HiBore Once upon a time that hurt my ears...and when I hit the hammer the sonic boom is really bad!

[killerduck]

The local paper ran a story about this sort of thing a while ago. Believe it or not, driver hits are actually incredibly loud (I'm talking 100+ dbSPL - louder than a lawn mower). We can't perceive the actual loudness because the peak is so fast, all we hear is the decay.
If you go down to the driving range and hit about 200 drivers you'll definitely be doing damage to your hearing. But the 12 or so per round make very little long term impact. Especially if you only play once or twice a week.

[Greg]

Who in the world hits the driver 200 times at the range at one time, practice another club once in a while. And im no expert on long term exposure to noise and hearing loss but a golf swing is so fast that unless you literally have several balls teed up and hit them almost simultaneously like ive seen on both Haney Project shows, your ears would recover and i doubt you could ever blame hearing loss on hitting a loud driver. I work in a factory and I dont know the sound level in there but im sure being in there 8-10 or more hours a day for 5 or more days a week for the past 10+ years has done more damage to my hearing than hitting a driver ever would but I cant really wear wear earplugs in there either because I need to hear whats going on around me over the machines to stay safe and not get ran over. If you're whining about your driver being too loud maybe you need to take up a safer hobby like knitting or collecting stamps.

[bunkerputt]

So I tried foam earplugs with my Titleist 905R. It isn't an incredibly loud driver as far as big drivers go, but I thought it sounded exactly like my old 975D with the earplugs in. I loved hitting that driver because I hated the loudness of the modern ones, but I gave it up for the extra 20 yards. Now with earplugs the new ones sound classic.