How far do you hit the golf ball?
58Golfers love to tell you how far they hit the ball. However what they are really referring to is how far they can hit their best drives, and even then most golfers like to (slightly) exaggerate how far they can really hit the ball. It makes for great banter in the clubhouse!
If you want to score well, you need to know precisely which club to take to get the ball to where you want it. That is, you need to select the club that, with most probability, will propel the ball the distance you require it to go, in the direction you want it to go in.
When I ask "how far do you hit the golf ball?" I am not referring to how far you could hit the ball. I am not talking about long drives. What I am referring to is how far you hit the ball with each club in your golf bag.
You need to know how far you hit the ball with each club in your bag.
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Calculate ‘carry’ distance.
When you are calculating how far you hit with each club, make sure you take the average distance. You need to know how far the ball will go with a club most of the time.
Well watered or wet fairways get little or no run. Good greens will hold a ball very well. So what is more important is how far the ball carries in the air before it hits the ground.
The advantage of this is you will know, give or take a few yards, precisely where you expect the ball to land. This is critical if you are to fly the ball over hazards such as bunkers. It is not important that the ball goes a total distance of, say, 100 yards. It is far more important to know that the ball will clear the bunker at 95 yards!
You need to know how far the ball carries with each club in your bag.
Plan your way round
To score better you need to spend a little time on each shot calculating the distance to the target. When you know how far you have to go (to avoid hazards) then you can select the correct club more easily.
If you start to plan your way round the course based on how far the ball needs to carry on each shot you may find that you get closer to the pin more of the time, and your scores start to fall.
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Thats a good question. Working it out on a driving range does presents a number of problems: Where exactly did the ball land? how far is that away? how much didstace is lost to the compression of the range ball?
The first questions - knowing where your ball lands and how far...well that is best addressed by picking driving ranges that preferrably have a slightly elevated tee area allowing you to more easily see the ball as it lands. It is also preferable to have a range that has a lot of distance markers. If you have a range finder you can check the precise distance of theae markers, and then work or fairly well how far you carried the ball.
A big "beware" here is that range balls are usually deliberately design to fly less far, so driving ranges can be constructed in smaller fields! You will notice that when you find a "real" ball in your basket...that one nearly always flies further!
In short then - range finders can help. But find a range with good targets and distance markers, with a slightly elevated tee and make allowances for range balls versus real balls.
JohnC 7 months ago
I agree with what you are saying but my question is: How do you know how far your ball carries before it hits the ground? Is there a distance finder that will tell you that - so that you can use it on the driving range