Can Your Golf Swing Produce A 300 Yard Drive?
Understanding the true distance you hit the golf ball might be one of the top 5 factors in improving your golf swing. Most Golfers have no idea what distance they hit the golf ball and because of that ….. well, bad things happen.
I can’t tell you how many 90 and 100 Golfers I’ve met that believe they can hit the golf ball 270 to 300 yards. This may come as shock to you, but 270 to 300 yards is a long way! The average drive on the PGA Tour isn’t 300 yards.
Yet, there’s a group of Golfers – a massive group of 90 and 100 Shooters – that believe they can hit the ball 270 to 300 yards. Let me put it bluntly – No You Can’t! If some guys on the PGA Tour can’t hit it 300 yards – you can’t either.
Understanding the ‘true distance’ you hit the golf ball is more important than the ‘bragging distance’ you can hit it. Success on the golf course has more to do with knowing your distances so you can PLAN on the golf course rather than just relying on the distances that you think you can hit the golf ball. It’s about knowing what trouble on the golf course is within reach of your tee shot and which trouble is out of reach.
In addition to the total length you hit the golf ball – I find it possibly even more important to understand how far you carry the golf ball in the air. Because if there’s a fairway bunker at about 225 yards down the fairway and you hit the ball 250 total yards on your tee shot – odds are that you’ll land your golf ball in the bunker.
Or if you hit your tee shots 195 yards and there’s a fairway bunker about 190 yards away from the tee – same thing.
Though, what’s troubling is when a Golfer thinks they hit the golf ball 30, 40, 50 and in some cases 80 yards farther than they actually can. In this case – it’s impossible to PLAN correctly around the golf course.
So why are there so many Golfers that think they hit the golf ball farther than they can?
Take the story of Paul – On the 4th tee, a Par 5 that doglegs (curves) to the right – that’s listed as playing 530 yards from the white tees, Paul hits a pretty good drive down the right-side. Now, as Paul feels good about this ‘better than normal drive’ – he finds a sprinkler head within a few yards of his ball that says 230 yards to the center of the green. He then checks the scorecard to see that the white tees were listed at 530 yards.
“Oh yeah, I hit that drive 300 yards!!”
What Paul failed to notice was that the white tees were playing ‘a little up today’ – meaning that the greens crew moved the white tees from the normal position. So instead of a 530 yard hole – it was a 500 yard hole today. Which you might feel is an unusual occurrence, but I can tell you from working at golf courses for many years – this happens on a daily occurrence as Greenskeepers often find it necessary to ‘rest a tee box’.
Now, you may be saying – “oh, so Paul hit a 270 yard drive, that’s still a big drive.” Well, maybe he didn’t even hit it 270 yards – Paul might’ve gotten a few more yards on a technicality because the hole doglegs to the right and hit his ball to the right. I say a technicality because the distances to the green from the sprinkler heads on the right-side of the hole are shorter to the green than the sprinkler heads in the middle of the fairway and the left side of the fairway.
For example – if Paul hit his drive the same exact distance, but it ended up on the left-side of the fairway, he might have a 280 yard shot to the green as opposed to the 230 yards to the green on the right side. Which, if all he did was subtract 280 yards from the 530 yards the white tees are listed at on the scorecard, he would have thought that he’d ‘only’ hit a 250 yard drive.
So even though Paul might’ve hit two drives the same exact distance – he would’ve miscalculated them as being different distances based on which side of the fairway his ball was on.
So in reality, the length of Paul’s better than normal drive was probably 250 yards or half of a football field shorter than his ‘300 yard drive’. And this doesn’t take in consideration if the hole is even slightly downhill, or the ground was a little harder because it hasn’t rained in a week, or if there was a slight breeze helping.
Which brings me to conclude based on my professional opinion that Paul’s best drives are possibly 240 yards, his average drive might be around 210 yards and his bad drives are around 180 yards.
Why is this important for Paul to know? Because now he can realistically PLAN around the golf course. Now he knows that his drives will end up between 180 and 240 yards away from the tee on 9 out of 10 tee shots. Now he can look-out at the golf course to see where the trouble is and PLAN whether that trouble is actually reachable or if he can realistically hit over the trouble. This will allow Paul to hit away from the trouble based on his yardages.
Because if Paul believed that he could hit the ball 300 yards ….. well, maybe that’s one reason why he’s been stuck in the mid 90’s to 100’s for 8 or more years. He probably hasn’t allowed himself to realistically PLAN his way around the golf course.
Do you truly know the yardages of your best, average and worst tee shots? Or do you only know the yardages of your ‘supposed’ best shots?
The Frustrated Golfer hits one or two ‘supposed’ 300 yard drives and believes they should always hit drives over 280 yards
The Player doesn’t care about 300 yard drives as much as they care about knowing the distances of their best, average and worst drives
Go ahead, Be a Player!
Regards,
