more distance and shaft question

im currently hiting my taylormade 580xd regular shaft around 250-260 and when i kill it around 270. keep in mind im only 15 but the kids i go up agaisnt in matches kill their drives like 20 yards further than my consistent range. and i cant try to kill it every time so im always away. anybody have any tips drills etc on driving it further. and my shaft question is, what happends when you need a stiffer shaft? like any other signs other that swing speed? im debating between a regular and stiff shaft. help please!

The harder you swing it, the stiffer you need the shaft to be because you want the shaft to stay in a controled flex throughout the swing. If you have a regular shaft and you are at 270, I would definatly go with the stiffer shaft. It maintains the accuracy with a higher swing speeds and as you know getting you more distance.

Just test them...as many as you can get you hands on. Get one you like to swing at 80% with and hit it straight. If you start to slice it, that is usually the sign you are too stiff and are not flexing the shaft enough. Don't pick the one that you have to swing 100% at to hit it straight...

Be patient about distance. It's not the deciding factor in you game...unless all you want to do is long driving.

Good drills for distance are:

1) Get you leading shoulder over your trailing knee in the backswing. Take a string and tape it to your shoulder. Without a club, just practice getting to this position slowly...this increases you flexability and increases the width of your arc. Hold that point where the string is on you knee for about 5 seconds. Do this over and over and over and over. Eventually, you should be able to be in this position while being in a complely relaxed state...not straining to stay there.

This may not answer your question, but: distance is not everything. You need a fair amount of distance, yes, but you don't need 300 yard drives each and everytime to play good golf. You have to have sufficient distance to hit 13 or 14 greens in regulation - that is it ... nothing more.

Let me give you a practical example: me.
I am 33 years old now and have been playing since I was 13, so that is about 20 years. I first broke par when I was 14, broke 70 the same year and scored a 66,68,66,70 when I was 16 in tournament play. Last year I scored a 65 without having seen the golf course before (and I was using borrowed clubs without a driver).

My driving distance: 240 yards at 75% power and around 275 yards with a good hard swing. I never hit the ball as hard as I can, never. In the last 2 years, I have gained about 30 yards in distance with various driver/shaft combinations. Before the last 2 years or so, my average was only about 230yds - and I still scored in the 60's and early 70's.

I am just about always away when I play with pros. So what? We all get to hit a drive, we all get to hit from the fairway, etc. But (there is always a but), I normally always hit the fairway, I hit 14 or 15 greens a round and the honour on the tee box is normally mine. If the honour is mine more times than not, who is the leader? Me.

At the end of the round, the winner is the guy with the lowest score, not the guy who bombed it miles ahead of you. Don't let the lack of distance (not that you are a short hitter) get you down! You have plenty of length to break par and easily too - if I can, anybody can.

Now to answer your question more directly:
If you are hitting to the 250-270 yd mark, you are probably in between shaft flexes. Unfortunately for us golfers, shaft flex is based on club head speed and not distance, so I'm taking an educated guess.

Distance is a combination of: ball speed, initial launch angle and spin rate. To get the ideal combo of all of those you can look at what type of ball you play with, loft of your driver, flex of the shaft, "kick point" of the shaft ... out there is your ideal combination and if distance is what you are after, go and find it. The only way to do that is through a fitting session with a good equipment fitting specialist.

Changing your shaft alone will not add distance I'm afraid.

If you really, really, really, really want to get more distance you would benefit from: 1. a fitting session and/or number 2. lessons from a long-driving expert.

Where abouts in the US are you? I will look up a few names and send them to you for a fitting session.

I know a few guys who teach long driving techniques to "conventional" golfers ... they teach the basics like coil, weight transfer, how to increase club head speed, etc. etc. I'd do this as a last resort.

__________________
Golf is easy ... once you know how.
Graham Arnott, teaching professional
Kelrosa Golf Studios
www.kelrosagolf.com
Class 'A' PGA Member
Full Member: World Golf Teachers Federation (GB&I)

Another traveller on the bus on the eternal quest for length......

As the guys have said you are by no means short. I would personally take 260 straight every time.

Regular shafts do indeed go further in general than stiff shafts on the same club. If you want more distance the only way is to increase your clubhead speed. To do so without making wholesale swing changes you could try a lighter shaft perhaps even changing to a lighter but stiffer shaft. You could also try one of the new generation of Carbon composite head drivers like the ERC Fusion or the Mizuno MP-001 which lighten the head a bit. Try a different ball as well. I changed from the Pro-V1 to the Pro-V1x and noticed a bit of a gain in distance. I then tried the Hogan Apex Tour Red and noticed a gain again. There's a lot of stuff out there to try so experiment when you get the chance. Try not to get so hung up about distance. There are a lot of guys out there can bash the ball 320 yards but cant chip or putt worth a darn.

Scores aren't always determined by distance off the tee.

Best of luck.

D.

Just another thing to add to why distance isn't that great - you still need to play with course management. I hit my driver on average 290, but a perfect hit will get me about 320 - 330. I really have to keep in mind the distance of the hole so I am in range to hit a full shot into the green. If the hole is under 400 yards I can not hit driver because my shortest club is my 60* LW which gets 95 yards. Anything less than that and I am hitting half shots. On par 4s I usually end up hitting 5W - 5i, depending on the distance of the hole. Par 5s are usually the only time I pull out my driver and since I rarely use it I am not comfortable with it as the rest of my clubs.

My 5W gets 230 - 250 and I rarely ever need more distance than that off the tee. If you do need more distance than that you really need to be working on your mid iron game.

__________________
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

alright , so you saying i should concentrate more on my irons to make up for the difference in driver length. makes a lot of sense., il try it haha. its still pretty hard becasue we play all the way back and the people i play are good, i mean really good. long drives, perfect irons good putters etc. my irons are far less then perfect but their decent enough to be a few strokes behind them.if you read my other post about the draw and divot, id be good if i fixed that and worked on consistency... so .... ya

__________________
mg

Just keep working hard and it will come. Are you taking lessons at all Diego? A lesson a month to ensure that you are on plane and your mechanics are solid and on track could make up the difference.

Are you doing any physical training? A good adea would be to start taking some yoga classes to increase your flexability and/or pilates to strengthen your core muscles. They now have Yoga and Pilates for golf. Believe it or not, you will gain quite a bit of distance from these two classes.

As you work on the two areas above and once you finish growing you will find you are hitting the ball a lot farther. Don't rely on technology to increase your distance.

But like I said before, you hit a good ball of the tee already at 250 - 270. Just keep working on hitting the fairway off the tee box and getting those long and mid irons consistant so your are getting on in regulation.

__________________
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