To everyone on this post; there is some really good stuff here in both your questions and responses. I like everything here, but I must give some extra credit to drumdude96 for being so eloquently correct.
It basically drives me nuts that some of the major OEM’s have continued making drivers longer and longer to simply win the launch monitor and driving distance wars. Some of them seem to care less that many golfers cannot simply hit the ball near the center of the face with such long drivers. Of course, we all know that directional control suffers dramatically along with trajectories being all over the place (golfers with too long a driver length miss the club face vertically as much as they miss it horizontally). I know that I play so much better with a 44 1/2” driver. It goes straight and is more consistently longer than a longer length driver of say 45” or more. My goal when driving is to hit every one of the 14 fairways somewhere. This makes it so much easier to score.
I just returned a few weeks ago from the Golf Galaxy retreat which is basically our sales meeting every year. I get to do my 1 1/2 hour PowerPoint presentation and then each day Nike, TaylorMade and Callaway get an entire morning to present us with next years line. All three of these companies are high quality manufacturer’s but with some differing philosophies. When Callaway presented, they basically said that in 2009 they were taking all their drivers back to 45”. In 2008, they had some at 45 1/2”. This was great news for golfers. On the other hand, TaylorMade went longer on one of their models to 46 1/4” (Burner) and also longer on their irons. Ping did not present at the meeting, but their 45 ¾” standard driver length is in my opinion a mistake.
One of the culprits that support longer driver club lengths in today’s drivers is clubhead size. The 460cc clubheads and especially the 460cc wide body clubheads are so large that the clubs do not look that long to the golfer when in the address position. Thus, the golfer is visually tricked into thinking that he can actually hit this thing on the correct spot of the club face as well as he could with a shorter driver length. For my new book, as well as to show students that come through the Golf Club design Studio, I have devised a visual aid that really makes a point. I simply took one of my early 1980’s TaylorMade Tour Burner driver heads of 140cc (persimmon was around 250cc’s) and made it 46” long. I also have a 460cc Maltby wide body that is obviously 460cc made to 46” long to be used for a comparison. I ask the students to put the 140cc driver in the playing position and most all of them will look stunned and say that they could not possibly play this driver at that length. It appears to the player that there is no way they could hit the ball on the middle of the face. The head is so small that it appears quite far away from the golfer and looks like a miniature clubhead which provides absolutely no confidence whatsoever. I point out that while we have made giant strides in increased sweet spots and much more forgiving driver head designs, we have not gone that far and we still need to hit the ball in a relatively small area on the club face to maximize the hit for distance, trajectory and solidness of hit. So, comparing the two 46” drivers side by side is enlightening to say the least. I think this would be a good convincing aid for any clubfitter to have.
Finally, it seems that a number of the manufacturer’s have gone to 44” and 44 ½” standard ladies driver lengths. This is absolutely the dumbest thing I can imagine. I prefer almost all women golfers to use the largest 460cc driver heads but to not exceed 43” in length unless they are very good and consistent ball strikers. Also, some manufacturer’s make ladies driver swingweights down as low as C-2. Women need to be at a minimum of C-5 and most should not go over C-7 unless they are strong players who hit the ball at least 200 yards.
O.K. the above is my two cents worth, but I do believe we can all help a lot of golfer’s play better with a driver length that fits them. I am not against 45” if the golfer can handle it, but we should all realize that a whole bunch of golfer’s will play so much better at 44” or 44 ½’ driver length (many of the tour players have discovered this). The name of the game is who can shoot the lowest score, not who can hit it the farthest. If any golfer can get both, more power to them. This is why we all need to get properly fitted for drivers and all golf clubs.
