Daly - icon for drivers
|
We accept that around 66 per-cent of shots in the round are played from 100 yards and two-thirds of those are with a putter but are they the ones in a round we remember? Nah! It's the tee shot we clouted on a high arcing flight that we didn't feel but which scorched almost out of sight.
No wonder today's club-makers pander to man's primal instinct, making clubheads more than twice the size they were when Ely Callaway introduced his first 190cc steel-headed Big Bertha driver in 1991.
I had to have one and found it a real head-turner. The sound was so distinctive, it was as clear as the first cuckoo.
Today's 460 cc heads make them easier to hit, the titanium faces deliver a wider sweet spot, the weight distribution and design in their construction helps get the ball airborne on a higher, straighter trajectory and the latest shaft technology enables us to punch or weight whatever our age or build.
And despite the advice from the sages that stretching our muscles to boom extra-long drives is counter-productive because it reduces accuracy, manufacturers still offer us long, 46-inch shafts that come standard in many modern drivers.
They're probably two inches too long for most club handicap players to handle but if the extra length generates more clubhead speed, and thus distance, to hell with a loss of control - golf is about how far not how many, surely?
After all there's nothing in golf -- and very little in life generally -- as thrilling as knocking seven bells out of a golf ball and watching it soar away on a gravity-defying parabola.
