How far to enter?

Does anyone know how far you have to hit the ball to enter long drive champs?

Any one can enter, but to qualify to move on to districts depends on the field. Usually anything over 350 yards will get you through to the next level.

Wow, 350+ yards - that's long. I take it the rest of these peoples games are not that good otherwise they would be winning everything

You have to realize that you get several shots and take the best one. In real golf, you get 1 shot. The long drivers are swining as hard as they possibly can, where the tour players are going for accuracy. So those extra 60+ yards that the tour players might get in length will be negated because they are off the fairway and trouble. Long drive players are usually only good at that one aspect of the game where touch around the greens (at a tour quality) is usualy absent.

The biggest difference between the long drivers and golfers is the equipment. The average driver length on the Long Drive ciruit is 48 - 49 inches where the stock shaft in a driver is 45 inches. The longer shaft creates a greater clubhead speed which enables the longer distance. If you were to add 3 inches to your driver shaft you would find that you would hit the ball about 30 yards longer than you currently do. The reason golfers don't have drivers with shafts that long is that the longer the club is the harder to control your shot. I have enough trouble keeping the ball in the fairway with a 45" driver - I couldn't imagine trying to keep a 48" driver in the short grass.

__________________
Gord

Quote of the month:
"It's easy to see golf not as a game at all but as some whey-faced, nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister's fever dream of exorcism achieved through ritual and self-mortification." ~Bruce McCall

With the shaft being that much longer wont it be really bendy, is this why it's hard to control?

you would need a 2x or 3x shaft so that the shaft is stiff enough. The reason it is hard to control is because of the length. That is why a PW is easy to control - it is short. The longer your clubs get, the less accurate you become because you are adding more distance between you and the ball.