[Mark_Rowlinson]

I've just been reading a newspaper report of the business at Kapalua.  It seems that in the play-off Vijay Singh hit a drive of 394 yards.   Apparently he then messed up the second shot. I've not seen it, and, in a way, it doesn't matter.  Singh is in his forties.

I also saw dozens of chaps, mostly in their teens, a few as old as 21, dominating proceedings at the US Amateur this year at Merion.  I cannot estimate the length of their drives, but a lob wedge in to a 500-yard par 4 suggests that they expect to hit the ball well in excess of 300 yards.

I am now 57 and getting very geriatric, yet I managed to hit the longest drive of my life last year, off the back 12th tee at Royal Troon.  It was around 350 yards.  My normal drive is down to around 200 yards - that's where (at absolute best) it lands and if there is any roll it is a huge advantage.  I imagine that if I were taken back to that tee at Troon with 100 balls, the wind in my favour, the fairway bone dry and decent contact with the ball I might manage 5 drives at 250 yards.  

How come these elders - nearly my age, come on - can hit drives of almost 400 yards in the heat of battle?  By the way, despite my prodigious drive on that hole, I was still very happy to walk in from the 16th green having been utterly humiliated.

[cary lichtenstein]

Perfect swings or nearly perfect seings produce 120+mph swing speeds and the new balls and clubs react to this dispropriationiately.

[Sean Leary]

Remember that hole is WAYYYY downhill and downwind.  And what Cary said.

[Brent Hutto]

An acquaintance of mine has spent time in the PGA Tour workout trailer with some of the Tour golfers. If you compare Vijay Singh's body today with Jack Nicklaus's at the same age it's like comparing a modern F-16 to a WW-II vintage Spitfire.

Plus, any less-than-optimum mechanics in Vijay's swing gets identified and corrected. And the optimum has been found by computerized analysis of how the ball comes off the clubface.

[redanman]

Mark

Kapalua has 500+ feet of elevation change;  don't feel old!

But I have played with twenty-somethings who carry bunkers at the 320 mark without a swing change.

NOW I feel old.....  

[Voytek Wilczak]

nearly perfect seings produce 120+mph swing speeds

Cary - I have plenty of nearly prefect seings but they fail to produce any decent clubhead speed at all.

Just kidding!...

[Doug Braunsdorf]

Mark

Kapalua has 500+ feet of elevation change;  don't feel old!

But I have played with twenty-somethings who carry bunkers at the 320 mark without a swing change.

NOW I feel old.....  

Bill,

S**t!  YOU carry the ball 320...and don't whine about being old, I got figuratively SPANKED at Morgan Hill by you earlier this year!  

[TEPaul]

To actually CARRY a golf ball 320yds in neutral conditions (no wind, not downhill etc) one would need to have a ball speed and swing speed at something close to Nebraska's Long John Hurley!!

For your information, and this is from the USGA's computer monitors on Merion's 5th hole Long John Hurley's ball speed was 195 mph which translates (according to the tech guys there) into a clubhead speed of about 133 mph!

Those speeds carry the ball between 320-330 although I must say for someone who hits the ball that hard Long John Hurley does hit it relatively low. He said he likes to do that because it's so windy in Nebraska. If he decided to hit it as high as some of these other guys today I suppose it's logical to assume his carry distance might increase some!  

Mark Rowlinson, I don't know how you managed to do it on that one drive but somehow you had it in you to swing about 133 mph and with a ball speed of about 195 mph to hit that drive 350 yards like Nebraska's Long John Hurley. The last email conversation I had with him I asked him if anyone has ever blown a drive by him but I didn't get an answer. If he does answer and says noone ever has I'll email him back and tell him he'd better not tee it up against England's Mark Rowlinson if he wants to keep his record of never getting outdriven intact.

[A.G._Crockett]

Distance comes from clubhead speed.

Clubhead speed comes from torque/turn.

Torque/turn comes from flexibility.

Flexibility declines less with age than you think IF you work to maintain it.  Strength DOES decline with age, but is less of a factor in distance than you think.

If you can stay flexible, your clubs and the ball don't know how old you are.

There.  It's settled.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Tom, the secret to that fluke drive was that there is a ridge across the 12th fairway at Troon and I managed to catch the downslope in such a way that not only did it kick the ball forward (running on a bone dry summer fairway and with the wind, of course) but also shaped it to the curve of the fairway.  It just ran and ran and ran - some 100+ yards after landing.  Hurley would have been looking for his ball in the dense rough way through the back of the green.

When I was an undergraduate at Oxford I played Southfield quite often.  There was a hole there - the 3rd, a 400-yard par 4 - which involved a drive downhill short of a stream and then an almighty thump uphill to find the green.  It was about 250 yards to the stream.  Occasionally young bloods attempted to drive over it (1960s, remember) and occasionally they succeeded, but more often than not failed.  But there were members there who had played through the war years when the courtesy of the green was given to American servicemen, some of whom had been professional golfers.  Apparently even then, with inferior equipment and lousy balls these chaps habitually cleared the stream.  Balls were in such short supply that you had to go out into the bushes and undergrowth to find one before you could start to play!

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