A-Z of Power
ABC | DEF | GHI | JKL | MNO | PQR | STU | VWXYZ
G is for Grip
Hit it further by getting your hold right
Lee Cox is the man long drive behemoth Joe Miller relies on for technical advice. “A good swing starts with a good grip,” he says.
“It is the biggest fault I see in amateurs and it destroys your chances of creating power.
“As you set your left hand (if you are right-handed) on the club, the grip should lie across the base of your fingers so that it is touching the joints. The only part of your palm that the grip should be in contact with is the hard part just under the fingers, NOT the fleshy part closer
to your wrist. Look at your glove. If there is any marking on this fleshy area of the palm you are gripping the club incorrectly.
“This grip is fine for putting and chipping, as it limits the influence of the wrists, but that is not what we want in the long game as it means we cannot generate power or square the clubface.
“When your left forearm is parallel to the ground, the angle between wrist and forearm should be acute (less than 90 degrees). From here you have to uncock your wrist so the club points downwards and then swivel your wrist so the clubface is square at impact.
“The more acute the wrist angle and the quicker you deliver this sequence, the further you will hit the ball. However, it is impossible to do any of that if your grip is wrong.”
H is for Hank Kuehne
The American boasts the longest ever driving average in PGA Tour history
When Hank Kuehne was 11, he won a long-drive contest with a 275-yard drive. A year later, he retained the title with a blow of 289 yards. He won the 1998 US Amateur aged 22. And when he was 28, he burst onto the PGA Tour. That season, armed with a 140mph clubhead speed and 180mph ball speed, Kuehne usurped John Daly as the longest hitter in the game by averaging a still-record 321.4 yards from the tee.
“The other pros are amazed,” smiles Kuehne. “When I’m hitting drivers on the range everything kind of stops and all the guys turn round to watch.”
Kuehne wasn’t accurate, sitting 187th in fairways hit, but he didn’t care. “To be honest, I think that stat is kind of skewed, because I’m not necessarily trying to hit the fairway on a lot of holes,” he shrugged. “If a hole is 340 or 350 yards, then I might knock it on the green or in a greenside bunker.”
Not that 340 or 350 was the top of Kuehne’s range. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone hit it that far,” said Arnold Palmer after witnessing Kuehne boom a 370-plus drive, while 11-times PGA Tour winner Andy Bean tells this story about a practice round with Kuehne. “We were on the 543-yard 6th at Bay Hill and Hank said, ‘I bet I can knock it on’.
“We gave him three shots at it and bet him dinner he couldn’t. There was a 10mph tailwind. His first effort came up a few feet short, but the second landed – eight feet on the green. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen.”
Butch Harmon once described Kuehne’s swing as “a perfect picture of power and balance… effortless power rather than powerful effort.”
A back injury kept Kuehne out of action for five years, and he struggled for form on his return. In 2012 and 2013, he played 17 times and missed 12 cuts. Nearing 40, he’s now relying on sponsors’ exemptions to get into events.
Whether or not he makes it back to the big time, Kuehne will always have 2003, a year when he was Mr Power.
I is for Innovation
In R&D labs around the world, a future breed of clubs are being developed. We look at the technology that could hit your bag soon
That spider-cum-spaceship at the above is a prototype TaylorMade driver that reveals what clubs could look like – if you’re willing to wait a while.
The “Mother of All Drivers” (MOAD) is pure flight of fancy given no R&A conforming rules. It features fins and aerofoils to correct any flaws during the downswing and guide the club along the correct path. Clever, eh?
“If you can’t think outside the boundaries, then you can’t properly design within them,” says Benoit Vincent, Chief Technical Officer at TaylorMade. “Some of our best ideas about conforming clubs came when we were thinking about how to build these clubs of the future.”
The MOAD might fall within the realms of fantasy, so we also asked revered club maker Tom Wishon to gaze into his crystal ball and tell us how the conforming clubs of the future could be different to what we’ve got today (right).
Slots, fins, springy faces… Have golf club manufacturers reached the limit of power-boosting technology, or are greater treats still ahead? We asked Tom Wishon, one of golf equipment’s most influential figures, to give us his predictions for the future…
Innovations that WILL happen…
More slots
Given the patents currently being filed by the major manufacturers, I’m certain there will be more and more slot technology.
Varied weight shafts
I believe you will see some companies adding weight to different areas of the shaft in order to create new swing feels. This is a really interesting idea that has quite a lot of potential, but it’s not strictly new – a few companies tried it in the 80s!
Smaller clubheads
Big clubheads are fantastic for off-centre hits, but they don’t actually boost the distance you can hit the ball off the sweetspot. Companies can design a face with the maximum legal rebound speed just as easily in a 250cc driver as they can in a 460cc driver. It’s possible that a couple of top professionals might ask them to go this way. If this happens and the golfer has some success with the smaller head, it’s possible that companies will introduce smaller-headed “better player” driver models.
Innovations that SHOULD happen…
Widespread professional custom fitting
The biggest innovation that could boost regular golfers’ power levels is a growth in professional custom fitting. I don’t mean the kind of thing you currently get at a golf centre; I mean a Saville Row-style bespoke experience where a club-fitting expert analyses your swing, fits you for all 12 key specifications and designs a set of clubs that matches your swing so perfectly you hit the ball further than you ever have before and as far as your current swing will allow. This might sound like pie in the sky, but it is actually available right now.
Shorter shafts
The majority of modern drivers come with 45.5-inch shafts. This is terrible for most golfers, who would be able to control the ball far more easily with a shorter shaft. In an ideal world, the major manufacturers would help mid and high handicappers by adding an easier-to-control 43 or 44-inch “game improver” driver to each line they bring out.