When does a drive stop accelerating?

[Michael Moore]

Last month I played in a tournament at the next level, competing against golfers who were much, much better than I.

It went poorly, but there were a number of important lessons. One of them was that we will never really get to know just how well we can strike it, because we can’t see the ball coming off the clubface. That is to say, I would watch my fellow competitor smash drive after drive, and wish that I could get that kind of ball speed and majestic takeoff only to occasionally find out that my best was as good as his best, and that it probably looked quite powerful in that first fraction of a second.

Today I tried to gauge how far a good drive travels before one can see it. A hundred yards? More interestingly, when does a good drive stop accelerating and start decelerating? I have no idea whatsoever.

[Garland Bayley]

... when does a good drive stop accelerating and start decelerating? I have no idea whatsoever.

The instant its recoil from the club face is done.

[Jim_Kennedy]

A 'good' drive travels about 85 yards in its first second.

When you see it is a function of how quickly your head swivels.

[Ed Brzezowski]

Usually when I hit a rather large tree or a nice body of water.

[Adam Lawrence]

... when does a good drive stop accelerating and start decelerating? I have no idea whatsoever.

The instant its recoil from the club face is done.

By definition. What additional force could be applied to the golf ball after it leaves the clubface?

[Thomas Dai]

... when does a good drive stop accelerating and start decelerating? I have no idea whatsoever.

The instant its recoil from the club face is done.

By definition. What additional force could be applied to the golf ball after it leaves the clubface?

Wind?
atb

[Tim Bert]

... when does a good drive stop accelerating and start decelerating? I have no idea whatsoever.

The instant its recoil from the club face is done.

By definition. What additional force could be applied to the golf ball after it leaves the clubface?

A REALLY, REALLY strong tailwind

[Joe Hancock]

Reminds me of Tim McCarver claiming certain pitchers have the ability to make a pitch accelerate through the strike zone....

[Ivan Lipko]

Negative acceleration starts right about when the ball leaves the clubface or thereabouts.
The quality of ball striking is not measured by the absolute length of the drive. It's more about the smash factor, the impact/launch conditions, the ability to hit the right direction and trajectory and most importantly how consistent and repetitive the aforementioned things are.

Example, you can have a driver speed of 110 mph and  hit it as far as someone with a ch speed of 103-105. This someone may have 80 per cent fairways hit,while you can have 80 per cent ob's, trees, water.

PS:  I realize it's all pretty obvious

PPS: we can know how well we strike it because we can feel the ball and impact w/o seeing it.

[JLahrman]

If the question is what force could be applied to the ball after it leaves the clubface, ANY wind will suffice.

If the question is what force could be applied to the ball after it leaves that clubface that would cause the ball to accelerate, that is where you need a REALLY REALLY strong tailwind.

[JESII]

There is no wind, however, that could do anything other than slow down a good drive...

[JESII]

Oh, and by the way, it's about getting the ball in the hole Michael...it's not about anything else. I promise.

[Michael Moore]

Thank you. It always looked like my tee shots were going from zero to sixty.

[Mike Nuzzo]

Adam,
Gravity.
Technically it is accelerating towards the earth until it lands on the earth.
Cheers

[JLahrman]

There is no wind, however, that could do anything other than slow down a good drive...

That is true, it's just that a good tailwind will decrease the rate of deceleration.

[Carl Nichols]

Reminds me of Tim McCarver claiming certain pitchers have the ability to make a pitch accelerate through the strike zone....

Don't forget the guys who could cause themselves to jump higher after already being in the air.

[Michael Moore]

It would appear that I have been asking idiotic physics questions on here for more than a decade.

www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,5478.0.html

If any of you need help with your poetry, just drop me a line.

[Peter Pallotta]

Oh, and by the way, it's about getting the ball in the hole Michael...it's not about anything else. I promise.

I've been trying to remind myself of this truth as often as I can, every time I play, ever since I took an iron off the tee on a Par 5 and parred it.

It's amazing how many strokes I take off my (usual) total score when I manage to remember to remind myself that it's all about getting the ball in the hole.

Somehow, as hard as this is for me to believe, that one thought alone has helped me become a better bunker player (without any practice whatsoever). I think it's because when I can manage to accept the possibility of bogie (and so aim to keep it at that), I find myself making less doubles.

Not exactly Bob Rotella stuff, but true for me

Peter

[JMEvensky]

Not exactly Bob Rotella stuff, but true for me

Actually,probably more valuable to most golfers than all the Bob Rotella stuff. Now if you can just get schmucks to pay you what they pay him,you're set.

[Brent Hutto]

Another insight that at least my fellow double-digit handicappers can benefit from is this one...

Our good swings and bad swings happen much more at random than we think they do. The proportion of good and bad swings is a trait of our golf game. The order in which they occur is random, mostly.

Examples abound. Whether you warm up/practice at the driving range before the round has less to do with your drive on the first tee than it does with simple randomness. Some tee shots you hit well, others you hit poorly. Which particular ones are good or bad is not controlled by that 20 minutes right before the round.

If you "notice" that a bad shot tends to be followed by another bad shot, that's just because you hit a lot of bad shots and sometimes they come in bunches. There's more coin-flip than swing mechanics involved in where those bunches happen to fall during a round.

Have you ever hit an awful shot into the woods, then played a provisional ball that was struck dead solid perfect? Did you think the good swing was because it was "only" a provisional? Nope, it's random. You just happened to make that dead solid swing on the provisional rather than on some other swing this hole or the next.

Any given weekend hack's game involves hitting darned near as many bad shots as good ones and hitting very few dead solid perfect ones. That's just the nature of not being a highly skilled golfer. It's very freeing to realize that you don't have to figure out WHY the bad swing showed up on the approach to #14 rather than the layup shot on #15. It was random. Quit trying to figure it out and just give it the old college try on the next swing.

[Brent Hutto]

It would appear that I have been asking idiotic physics questions on here for more than a decade.

www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,5478.0.html

If any of you need help with your poetry, just drop me a line.

Who is your favorite living poet, Michael?

I really enjoy the poems of Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, Susan Ludvigson and (on my darker days) Andrew Hudgens is a total hoot!

[Peter Pallotta]

That's a terrific point, Brent.

(Off Jeff's post, maybe we could form a school: "The Brent and Peter: Average Advice for Average Golfers from Average Guys")

I find that I score worse when, if I get off to a poor start, I start telling myself that "I just don't have it today" or, worse, if I start trying to "figure out" why the opening tee shot was so bad and "compensating for it". It's then that I start doing exactly what you say, i.e. "noticing"....which is the kiss of death for me.

As in my post, when i can remember that I'm trying to get the ball in the hole in the fewest strokes, I forget about all that noticing and figuring out and compensating, and just try to make the best of the situation.

Peter

[Brent Hutto]

It's very simplistic sounding but true. Whatever swing you've got going today is the one you're stuck with. Better off trying to get the ball in the hole in spite of a malfunctioning swing than to waste the whole round trying to fix it. If you couldn't fix it yesterday or last month or last year you sure ain't gonna find the secret in the next three hours!