Long Distance Golf Drivers - Do They Work?

The long distance golf driver is a development in golf club design that has been welcomed with open arms by many golfers. Up until about 20 years ago, the only way to increase your distance was to improve technique, but since then there has been an endless development of long distance golf drivers.

But do they actually work? Let's take a look at the theory and the facts.

The short answer is that if the long distance driver is going to work for you, there is an essential proviso. This is that your swing needs to be consistent and accurate.

The long distance driver works due to basic laws of physics. The shaft is longer, which means that the speed of the club head as it strikes the ball increases, and therefore the ball goes further. The modern equipment has lighter shafts too, meaning you can swing faster to increase this impact speed even more.

All well and good, but here's the kicker - with a longer shaft and higher speed, you get a bigger arc of the swing, and the sweet spot on the ball gets smaller and smaller! This means that to get the advantage of the physics of the design of this club, you need to consistently hit the ball at the exact correct point. If you don't, you not only lose the advantages, but the same laws of physics start to work against you, and you actually lose distance instead of gaining it!

So the bottom line is that with a long distance driver, if you strike the ball at the wrong spot, even by a tiny fraction of an inch, all the advantages will disappear, and you may find yourself worse off than with a regular driver.

Some of these new distance drivers cost a lot of money, and it could be argued that the money could be better spent on some sessions in the nets to improve your swing!

In some cases you may even find that you get more distance by using a shorter club. This is a mental issue, that people hold a driver in their hand, and think they need to give the ball an extra hard wallop. That is simply incorrect, and the thought of hitting harder often ruins the swing.

So if your swing is not yet consistent, you might be better off taking a low iron or a driving iron, and work on increasing your accuracy first. Over time, you'll find your distance shots improve.

If you have an accurate and predictable swing, then it could be a great time to move on to trying out a long distance driver.

So to sum up, long distance golf drivers do work, but you need to have the technical swing to get the full benefit.

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Author: Peter Charalambos


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