picrig

As a career as in a touring professional? Odds are no, although I won't say never. Some other sort of career in the golf profession (sales rep, club pro, course general manager, etc), by all means. I've dropped my handicap about 9 strokes over the last year and am keeping that downward trend going and am shooting to pass my PAT in a couple years and try to make it as a club pro or teaching pro. To make it as a touring pro you would have to have sponsors/funding that would allow you to make golf your profession right now. Practice every day, all day, get the best instruction, and you could get yourself to scratch potentially. I'd recommend picking up a copy of Paper Tiger by Tom Coyne just to give you an idea of what you're up against. He went on a 16 month quest, spent in excess of $100k, went from a 14 to a +1, and still could barely break 80 in qualifying schools because of the mental part of the game. I think we as amateurs underestimate just how hard it is to play in a real tournament environment where your livelihood is on the line. Not to be discouraging, though! If you set your mind to it and work at it, I say go for it. If I had started playing seriously at 19 instead of 23, I might be thinking the same things as you. Instead, I've relegated myself to trying to make it as a club pro and maybe playing some mini-tour events down the road for fun. Good luck!

I agree that a lot of tour players can hit the ball 330 (although remember, they're getting a lot more roll on their closely mown fairways than a lot of us are. Average driving distance is actually taken as the average of the drive on two preselected holes (one downwind, one upwind), typically chosen as a hole where players will use driver (although they by no means have to).

This thread seems to be one that never ends, so I figured I would chime in again. I've noticed people (low HCs) recently in this thread say they average 300. That would make them one of the top 20 on tour (as of 2007). Fine, I have no reason to doubt that some of you bomb the ball and simply lack the more than exceptional short game the pros have. However, I still find it extremely difficult to believe that there are very many, let alone a significant number of 20 HCs who drive the ball 300 yards more than once or twice a year even counting drives that are wind aided. I have tracked the distance of every ball I hit with the driver since Christmas (when I got my GPS). During that time (9 rounds), I have averaged 209 yards with my driver. That includes duffs, tops, shanks, hooks, everything. Now, I'm not a short hitter. I'm 6'0", 180, athletic (3 sports in high school, although golf wasn't one of them) and can get a hold of balls a lot of times. I have only hit 3 drives over 280 (296, 287, 282) yards in the last 8 rounds. Two of the three were with a ~15mph wind at my back and the other was slightly downhill with a good roll. Let me give a recent set of distances for all my drives for my last round: 241 200 181 195 180 215 204 287 150 185 229 So, quite a few drives @ 215 or above, but also a lot between 180 and 200. The 287 yard drive was an absolutely towering drive with a 15mph breeze at my back. If I've ever hit a drive that I felt like it belonged on tour, that was it...and it still wasn't 300 yards. Just my two cents.

Shiner Bock (and other varieties are good, too) Fat Tire I'll mix in some others that my buddies recommend, but those are the two staples.

If you're not honest about your own game, the chances of improving are pretty slim....at least that's my philosophy. I'm hoping to be down in the 10 range by the end of the summer. I'm going to to make a career change and head to a golf academy to get an associate's in PGM (currently finishing up my master's in atmospheric science). As a 17 handicap, if I can't be honest about my game I'm going to get stuck there and my dreams of passing the PAT in a couple years will quickly go down the drain. I see you're from Austin...any course recommendations in the area? I'm over in College Station and am always looking for a new course to play w/in an hour or two drive.

Just to throw in my 2 cents at the end of this long discussion. As my profile shows, I'm about a 17 handicap, improving fairly rapidly (starting playing in June, have knocked about 6-8 strokes off my handicap). I got a GPS for Christmas. Never really knew how far I drove the ball before then other than estimations (would've guessed my average was 230-240). Today was a good example, though, I think of how a 15-20 handicapper can play. It was breezy today (15-20 mph winds) so downwind holes played shirt and vice versa. I record the distance of all my drives w/my GPS, including mishits, shots in the rough, etc, and average them all at the end of the round. For the day, I averaged 226.2 yards on my drives. But, I had 3 drives of 270 yards or more (295, 272, 270). All three of those were downwind. Holes that played crosswind I hit drives between 210 and 235, and then there were of course the few mishits (150, 172, 195). I doubt I could pop a drive 300 w/no wind, but the fact that I hit it 295 today means I can get in the neighborhood on occasion with some wind. But, my average is 70 yards less . Now, as I continue to improve, I expect those 150-200 yard drives to mostly disappear which should push my driving average up closer to the 240 range.

My parents have a family friend, now in his mid-60s, who was formerly a scratch golfer (and played in some state and national tournaments). As he's gotten older and played less, his handicap has gone up (something like a 7 now), but it's mainly from lack of practice in the short game...his ballstriking is still great (in fact, even though he's 40 years older than me, he outdrives me occasionally). The first time I ever played with him, we were on a par 5, about 240 out after our drives (the hole played right around 500), he pulls out an iron, so I assumed he was laying up. Then I noticed it was a long iron. He hits his shot, it lands just on the edge of the green. I asked what he hit. His reply: "A 1-iron." To this day, one of the most impressive shots I've ever seen in person.

No problem. I didn't know either until I saw a link from someone here to the PGA's procedure for measuring driving average

Drives do not have to be in the fairway to be counted towards your driving average. The PGA tour calculates driving distance by choosing two driving holes per round (one playing into the wind, one downwind) and takes the average of those to drives, regardless of whether the ball is in the middle of the fairway or in the deep rough. So to get a true idea of "average driving distance" in the same sense as PGA pros, 15+ handicappers (like myself) need to average in those 150 yard pop ups, or that high slice that rolled to the edge of a lake.

If that's really the distance you hit the 5W and 7W, I'd think about a different setup. Having both in your bag w/a distance gap of only 0-5 yds (according to your yardages). I might be tempted to leave the 3W in your bag at maybe 15/16* to get the 220-230 distance, so you would have D/3W(16*), then a 19ish* hybrid to get you in the 200-210 range and then your 23* for the 190 range. Just my thoughts.

Yeah, I know a guy who plays the Exotics 3W...he's a pretty long hitter to begin with (and about a 5, so he's got more than just distance), but I watched him hit the 3W on the launch monitor and he was hitting it 290+. Maybe they needed to recalibrate the monitor, but I've also heard that the 3W is long. That's probably the next club in my bag I need to replace (mine doesn't really fit my game anymore), so I might take a look at it.

I just picked up a TourEdge Exotics 3H (18*) to add to the bag. Demoed it for a round and really liked it. Was the first time that I was 205+ yards out and confident that I could hit a ball and stop it on the green. One thing I liked (as opposed to the Adams Idea Pro Gold that I also had w/me to try out) was the slightly shorter shaft (39.5"). It probably shortens the club by a few yards, but to me, the extra control seemed worth it. Anybody played with the Exotics? Like them? Dislike them? Just curious what other people have experienced.