swing harder

I just hit a 180 yard pitching wedge. swinging as hard as I could in the center of the face. I guess swinging hard works. get used to swinging hard then work on control. starting over with my golf. swing hard first, control later.

Yeah, what Ernest said.

But for fun, lets look at this for a second.  I carry a LW,SW,GW,PW,9 through 4 iron, hybrid, 3 wood and driver.

If I hit my PW 180, theoretically my 8 iron would be somewhere around 205, 6 iron around 230, and 4 iron around 260.  Hybrid maybe 275, 3 Wood 300, and Driver, I average something like 315-320. ;)  And on the other end, my GW goes 165, SW goes 150 and LW 130.  What do I do on the 10-12 or so holes every round where I'm less than 130 yards out after my monster tee shot?

That means a par 4 hole would have to be longer than 500 yards for me to ever need any club between my pitching wedge and my driver.  My point is, that this is silly ... if my goal is to hit a PW 180 yards, then you're saying that I want to make it such that I have almost zero use for half of my bag.  Unless you want me to replace the hybrid, 4 iron and 5 iron with a 64, 68, and 72 degree wedge?  LOL ... ridiculous.

Also ... unless you are counting roll on the parking lot hardpan of the driving range, or are hitting downhill or downwind, or perhaps marked a P on your 6 iron, then I am highly skeptical of your claim.

lol  Yeah I'm calling BS here as well.  I hit my PW about 120 and while I'm sure that's less than a lot of people it certainly isn't 60 yards less.

lolwut

He probably thinned it, and it rolled an extra 60 yards

Pro's don't hit punch shots all day. They hit normal shots all day. Some pro's might hit a few knock down shots, basically slightly lower, but pro's don't routinely hit punch shots. They might look like punch shots if your use to a very high trajectory in your shots. When i first saw pro's play in person, after really getting into changing my swing, I though they hit it way low. Then i realized I just hit it way to high ;)

Thanks, Hank...

(the above was Haney's advice for young golfers - swing fast (not hard), and then get control later)

At the range, if my swing did not have other issues, I would swing as fast as possible on several shots just to see what it would do, and then go back to 80%. It's also not a bad idea to swing a lighter club, then a heavy club to get your so-called "fast twitch" muscles working.

At my local course, which is just rank with water, they sell big sacks of random balls they pull out of the ponds for only a few bucks.  Before you start your program of power before control I would suggest buying as many of these as you can, you're gonna need 'em!

Seriously, golf is a game of control and finesse.  The greatest golfers have powerful swings over which they (mostly) exercise control and finesse.  But you can be a darn good golfer with only the control and finesse and very little real power.  As always, others are invited to check me if I'm wrong, but I truly believe if you can hit your driver 200 or so yards down the middle of the fairway, and follow that up with accurate controlled shots into and on the green you can easily get to shooting about 80 most of the time, which puts you in the upper single digit handicap range, and makes you pretty elite among the general golf population.

I lobby we change the thread title to "Swing More Harder!"

I once hit a baseball 728 feet, I think.......yep, pretty sue that I did......... just by swinging the bat very hard.

It took me decades to learn to swing at 80%.  Currently one of my favorite shots is a partial wedge from 100 out.  I guess I could let a 60 degree rip but I don't think I would get the same result.  Ball flight would be interesting though.