Shock Finding: You're Only As Athletic As The Driver You're Playing

Golf.com’s Andrew Tursky “wanted to see how much driver technology has actually increased distance over the years” and conducted a test to find out.

He took five Taylormade drivers from different years over to True Spec Golf—company man!—and used a Foresight launch monitor to gather his data.

While you should hit the link to understand his approach and results, the biggest takeaway involved the leap from the 2004 R7’s Quad carry distance, which jumped 22.1 yards from 264.2 to 2021’s SIM2’s 286.3. The overall distance jump of 25.4 yards from 285.4 to 310.8 Tursky found would suggest:

(A) it’s not all the ball

(B) His athleticism really fluctuates as he changes clubs, not coincidentally

(C) The helping agronomy also was totally inconsistent between shots

Anyway, nice research on how different drivers react.