Mark O'Meara Hits Persimmon

[iacas]

[michaeljames92]

I hit one the other day for the first time. To be honest i didn't find it terribly hard to hit with a controlled swing, but it was quite hard to go after a shot without mishitting it. I found you can hit really nice lowish runners that go pretty far still, but the forgiveness on bad shot is very small.

[k-troop]

Anyone remember seeing Faldo's demonstration with hickory, modern, gutty, and titleist?

Right after he started working in broadcasting, about six or seven years ago, and they had him start doing the on-course demonstrations.  He hit four shots, using four pieces of equipment:  a modern driver, a hickory shafted persimmon driver, a modern golf ball, and an old gutta-percha ball.  He hit one shot with each ball using each club, so four shots.

The biggest factor in game improvement (at least per his highly scientific experiment) seemed to be the ball.  When he hit the Pro-V with the hickory club, it still went about 295.  When he hit the gutty with the modern driver, I think it went about 240.  Of course he made perfect swings, put I think it was instructive.