Generally speaking, should driver loft be lower for taller players?

[delav]

So your driving distance is longer than Luke Donald's, Mike Weir's, Trevor Immelman's, and Tim Clark's -- and you're far more accurate?

Tour pros driving distance is often a mix of tee clubs... not driver alone. Also, tour players "hit" less fairways because the courses they play aren't exactly the same as the local municipal the OP plays with 50 yard fairways.

[Shanks A Million]

Tour pros driving distance is often a mix of tee clubs... not driver alone. Also, tour players "hit" less fairways because the courses they play aren't exactly the same as the local municipal the OP plays with 50 yard fairways.

Fortunately, the PGA tour found a way to eliminate that argument once and for all. Now they have an "average of all drives" category.

http://www.pgatour.com/r/stats/info/?317 Here's the numbers of the average driver for each player listed: Donald = 267.2 Wier = 266.2 Immelman = 267.1 Clark = 268.0 Even Bubba Watson only hits 62% of his drives over 300 yards. People never drive the ball as far as you think. However, they also don't hit many drives under 240. The man who hits the most <240 is Craig Bowden, at 16.67%. But the OP was concerned with his good strikes, and 270 is a perfectly reasonable number.

[sean_miller]

Fortunately, the PGA tour found a way to eliminate that argument once and for all. Now they have an "average of all drives" category.

Athlon Sports listed some PGA Tour stats in their annual golf issue - probably available at pgatour.com, but anyway, one that caught my eye was led by Dustin Johnson.

Yards to the pin after tee shot. This has some bias of course, since not every player has the same schedule, but it's an interesting list.

[Blades4me]

I've been pondering this question for some time now. I'm a taller guy (about 6'3") with long arms, and as a result my swing is naturally a little more upright, though I've been working on flattening it out. I usually hit my irons, hybrids, and fairway woods pretty high, but on a nice trajectory and not too high. With my driver, though, I tend to hit it maybe a bit too high. On a good driver swing, the ball goes about 260, with minimal roll. To put my distance into perspective, I hit a wedge about 135, my seven iron about 170, 250 or so with a 3 wood.

As has been posted earlier, its not your height, its about angle of attack, club head speed and ball rpm's. I'd suggest getting on a launch monitor and finding a loft/shaft combination that yeild a launch angle of 12-14* with a ball rpm of 2500-3000. Those are optimin numbers for anyone. Also as a tall person, (I to am 6'3" with long arms), we will ALWAYS have a higher trajectory b/c we have steeper angle of attack. Personally I like having a high trajectory cuz I can go over most trees; also with a higher angle of attack it isn't that hard to stick the green with long irons. Sure it is good to know how to do knock down and punch shots. I have PX 5.0 and 5.5 shafts in my sets of irons and IMO they are much better in the wind than DG's cuz they don't put as much spin on the ball.

My driver is 9* but measured out to 9.8* with a stiff, high kicking Stultz shaft and thats been good for 250+.

[tim31x]

the loft plays a small the reason for driver trajectory. the less loft on the club, the less forgiveness it has due to the bulge and roll factor in the design of the club. the shaft is probably the culprit, it may be too weak, but probably has the wrong kick point for you. if you hit it too high, look for a shaft with a higher kickpoint and try it out. do a launch monitor shaft test to compare a few and find the right one for you.

-tim