How far do you hit your clubs?

The first time I used a trackman I found my yardages were about 10% less than I expected. It didn't make sense at all so I decided the machine wasn't calibrated properly. And the second time I used one I found out I was right. Same ball was carrying 200-220m on the first day and 240-260yrds the second. To be honest I was fairly spot on with my distances before I got my watch and that confirmed I was right.

I'll give the averages from my watch too, but they're a bit distorted. I usually hit my 3w if I'm playing into a wind, so that average is down. But generally they're up for some reason.

HC 14, distances in metres

D 240 238
3W 215 205
5W 205 202
4i 182 188
5i 175 184
6i 165 173
7i 155 163
8i 145 154
9i 135 141
PW 125 128
GW 110 122
SW 80 92

I'd love to see other people's yardages though. I suspect I'm longer than average particularly for my handicap because when I play with others I'm generally using a club or two less than them / hitting last from my drives. Usually when we hear stats about how far others hit it it's how far Rory hits a 5i or something. Which is incredible to hear, but not really relatable.

REFLINE1 wrote: »

Interesting, plan to hit the range again tomorrow so will be keen to see how they compare.

Very hard to gauge on the range. Different balls, you're trying to spot how far it went beyond the 150 mark from 150m away. I wouldn't bother trying to figure out your distances from the range to be honest, you'll be too far out for any meaningful figures.

I got my yardages initially from experience on the course figuring out how far away from the middle of the green I was and how close I ended up distance wise with each club. Lots of adjusting for elevation / wind and lie a bit. I hit it very high so run isn't much of an issue for me.

The watches are good for measuring your clubs distance too, just be careful if using one that you're not codding yourself by picking the furthest ones, the ones in favourable conditions, etc.

REFLINE1 wrote: »

ya fair point. Just trying to get an idea, as up until now would have been completely guessing, which as you can imagine doesn't lead to the correct club selection very often!

Yardages are massively important, but there's little point in getting inaccurate data!

I'm glad that people seem to have come around in the last few years to all golfers caring more about accurate yardages. When I got my first watch, probably about 8 years ago, a lot of people used to say that it was a waste of money for a mid - high handicapper as we're not all that consistent with how far we hit it anyway. But my thinking was that we're not all that consistent with how straight we hit it either, but we still try to pick a specific line to hit it on anyway. Because if we're 15 yards off line, if the spot we aimed at was 10 yards off line to begin with suddenly we're 25 yards off line!

The same is true for distance. A good example is an elevated green. Go long and you might face a very tricky chip back. Short and you might hit a bunker. If you get your distance right you might have 10 yards of grace short or long where you'll still end up on the green. If you're 5 yards off you'll much more easily end up long or short.

mike12 wrote: »

I got a shotscope V2 golf watch, super for stats and yardages.

Yardages exactly what I would expect, 7 iron just a touch long but I did go after it a couple of times lately.
4 hybrid a touch long as well some big bounces of hard fairways into par 5s it usually Carrys 220

What do you play off Mike? They're good distances!

blue note wrote: »

The first time I used a trackman I found my yardages were about 10% less than I expected. It didn't make sense at all so I decided the machine wasn't calibrated properly. And the second time I used one I found out I was right. Same ball was carrying 200-220m on the first day and 240-260yrds the second. To be honest I was fairly spot on with my distances before I got my watch and that confirmed I was right.

I'll give the averages from my watch too, but they're a bit distorted. I usually hit my 3w if I'm playing into a wind, so that average is down. But generally they're up for some reason.

HC 14, distances in metres

D 240 238
3W 215 205
5W 205 202
4i 182 188
5i 175 184
6i 165 173
7i 155 163
8i 145 154
9i 135 141
PW 125 128
GW 110 122
SW 80 92

I'd love to see other people's yardages though. I suspect I'm longer than average particularly for my handicap because when I play with others I'm generally using a club or two less than them / hitting last from my drives. Usually when we hear stats about how far others hit it it's how far Rory hits a 5i or something. Which is incredible to hear, but not really relatable.

Your either a hook or ****e around the greens




Sorry.

Afraid to post mine. There are some on here with pro tour yardages

pinkdoubleeagle wrote: »

Afraid to post mine. There are some on here with pro tour yardages

Yeah, and I'll keep to myself average putts per round and how many balls I lose on average each time I play :rolleyes:

I use my garmin S60 to give me my average yardages for my clubs but the problem I find at the moment is that I don't think I've built up enough data for the averages to be too reliable. Problem I have is that I will fat a few irons or mis-hit a few drives or woods during a round and then I assume pitch shots with wedges will bring the average down. So you'd have to build up an awful lot of data to iron out those anomalies unless it takes a statistical approach to calculating the average, like a bell curve for anyone who did stats in school/college.

I kind of know what i'd hit from 100 yrds up based on the figures so i'm happy I can club pretty well from it. I actually tend to go with the max figures for the short irons as being closer to the real length I hit and then for the longer clubs its probably somewhere between the max and the average allowing for the odd mis-hit....

Before I had the watch, I generally clubbed against what i'd hit from 165 yrds, usually 8/9 iron and then adjust for wind, elevation etc....I used to play ping zings which I now know were pretty strongly lofted for their time and probably more consistent with modern clubs lofts for game improvement irons. I often used to think I was pretty good that I would be hitting irons similar length to pros until I realised that pro irons are much weaker lofted so if they hit the same club as me they'd probably hit it a club longer than me.....also i'd say pros don't tend to hammer their irons as hard and go more for control as another reason my iron figures aren't bad compared to a pro....

GreeBo wrote: »

Just thought I'd add these so people can take an honest look at themselves.
These are Tigers average distances from end 2019.

DRIVER: 297 YARDS
3-WOOD: 265 YARDS
5-WOOD: 245 YARDS
3-IRON: 227 YARDS
4-IRON: 215 YARDS
5-IRON: 200 YARDS
6-IRON: 186 YARDS
7-IRON: 170 YARDS
8-IRON: 157 YARDS
9-IRON: 148 YARDS
PITCHING WEDGE: 136 YARDS
SAND WEDGE: 118 YARDS

If you are hitting your 9i 160+ yards then you are likely delofting it and only fooling yourself imo.

A few comments around the above....I don't think its beyond the reals of possibility that a good mid/low handicapper can hit as far as a pro down to maybe mid iron direction when you consider that a lot of pros hit clubs that are higher in loft than a game improvement iron of the same number.

Here's my take based on my own experience. As i mentioned previously, i played ping zings as a decent junior and until very recently when i changed and got back into the game after a few years out. What i found was that down to maybe 6/7 i could hit the ball a mile compared to my friends and these numbers would compare favourably against pros for the loft reason in hindsight. But the main reason was probably that i was very confident with my short/mid irons so used to "hammer" them. Swing speed = distance to a point, right? But as you move down the clubs, i wasn't anywhere near as confident and rightly or wrongly, would swing slower thinking it was more controlled only to find that my gapping was all over the place once i went beyond 6 iron. Basically i was hitting a 6/7 iron as far as a 5 iron and probably more accurately.

Also, with regards the woods, i think its probably the same story with irons and woods. Good amature golfer can keep pace with pro down to maybe mid irons but then from long irons to drivers, pros obviously come into their own with distance....i'm wondering if amatures just can't get the club head speed necessary to generate the distances but might be more confident hammering shorter irons. I would also say, without being able to provide any references, that pros tend to swing within themselves for their irons for distance and shape control but when it comes to the longer clubs, they use their full potential as swing speed and distance is king rather than accuracy that maybe a slower more controlled swing might give instead......

So in summary, i don't think its unreasonable for a decent amature to have stock yardages comparable to a pro down to mid iron but beyond that, pros on average will pull away......

The delofting thing might be true but if that person hitting 160+ with a 9 iron has consistent gapping from short to say mid iron, who cares? if it works for them, then all power to them....i don't think any amature every has said they are as good as a pro just because they might be able to hit as far for certain clubs...its just a mildly interesting thing that amatures like to grasp at that they might have something in common with the players they see on the TV....

In the last week i've hit two perfect 4 irons. One went 266 and the other went 174.

I work off 125 carry for PW and take it from there usually.

Edit: Looking at the table above, it's pretty spot on for me. I'm around 105-108 driver swing. The only difference is that i've an RBZ stage 2 hybrid that goes a mile, it'll be the next club out though as it is too close to my 3 wood. Will change for a ping g410 hybrid that fits in well.