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Pro Driver Stats of Interest |
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Written by gocchin
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Monday, 08 January 2007 |
 It's always fun following what kind of equipment the pros use on tour. I was going through some old magazines and came across an old Golf Classic mag. In it there was some really useful data about driver shaft specs for pros in Japan and a small sampling from the Masters in 2005. What I found very interesting was how almost half the Japanese pro MEN used a driver shaft shorter than the standard 45". And while the Japanese men may be shorter than their US counterparts in average height, I really couldn't find a correlation between player height and shaft length. Some of the players playing 44-44.5" lengths were close to 6 feet tall. My only guess is that the pros create such great driver head speed, what they might lose in distance, if any at all, they gain in accuracy through the shorter shaft.
While the Japanese men are using shorter shafts in their drivers, the women are sticking to around 45" or so in an attempt to gain distance. Sakura Yokomine, who stands at around 5' 6", is one of the longest Japanese women off the tee uses a driver 45.75" in length, longer than any man on the Japanese pro tour.
Another thing to point out is the use of lower swingweights in Asia. You don't notice it as much with the pros but to see even recreational men swinging a driver with a swingweight of C7-C9 is not uncommon at all.
While the data which is from a year ago, doesn't quite show it yet, I've noticed more of the JPGA pros moving to higher lofts coupled with low launching, low spinning shafts. This is definitely a trend we're seeing not just in the pro ranks.
Click on the chart below for a full sized image of the data.
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