How fast does the average golf ball travel?

Luke is an avid weekend-warrior golfer from the East Coast who plays golf more than he cares to admit. Starting from zero experience to averaging breaking 80 he has tried everything to improve his game.

While I never tell all golfers that it can fix everyone, a lot of players are amazed at how much progress they can make once they figure out their impact tendencies and consciously try to start striking different parts of the face.

If you’re noticing a bias towards one side of the face, I like using a “fight fire with fire” approach. For example, when I am struggling with heel strikes, I merely try to exaggerate a miss on the outside of the toe. Sometimes I’ll even set up with the ball on that side of the face. Interestingly enough, when I try to strike the toe, it moves my impact from the heel to the center of the face.

You can also experiment with small changes in your setup to see how it changes your strike location – like standing closer, or further away from the ball.

Another experiment I love to do is altering tee height. Start adjusting your tee in low, medium, and high positions and see how it changes your impact location on the driver’s face (or other clubs you use off the tee). Your goal is to try and reduce strike towards the bottom of the clubface, and get them more towards the center, or just above it.

Using physical barriers like tees can help improve your impact location. A good drill is to set two tees slightly wider than the width of your club – try clearing the gates with your practice swings and then while trying to hit a ball. Or you can experiment with a tee on one side of the ball as well, depending on where your misses are.

Lastly, you can challenge yourself to strike different parts of the clubface on purpose. Consciously try to hit the heel, center, and the toe of the club separately. If you’re looking for real bonus points, you can try Andrew Rice’s drill where you separate the driver’s face into four quadrants and try to strike each one separately.

Training Your Body to Move Faster

If you’re into physical fitness, there are a couple of ways to increase your clubhead speed without sacrificing your technique, which will, in turn, help you gain more golf ball speed.

I believe the most foolproof method is to train several times a week, focusing on strength, mobility, and power. There are plenty of golf-specific programs out there that can help. One recommendation would be to find a TPI certified trainer. Also, this article, written by Mike Carroll from Fit For Golf, goes over his top nine golf exercises.

Additionally, Overspeed training has become a prevalent method of increasing clubhead speed. SuperSpeed Golf has become the gold standard for speed training in the golf industry. This can be done by itself or in conjunction with a workout routine.

Wrapping It Up

If you want to hit golf shots that go as far as possible, increasing your ball speed is the most critical metric to keep track of. Think of it as a measure of efficiency. My number one recommendation is to work on improving your impact location, which is an easy (and useful) addition to your practice sessions. On top of that, increasing your swing speed through physical training is another way to get it done. Combine the two, and you’ll be blowing your drives by your buddies very soon!

The United States Golf Assn. tests golf equipment to determine if it conforms to certain specifications relating to the speed with which a golf ball leaves the face of a driver. Using a standard of approximately 109 mph clubhead speed, it finds that approved golf balls leave the face of the driver at about 180 mph on the average. Greater clubhead speed (Tiger Woods, for example, can swing his driver at speeds near 120 mph) results in slightly higher ball speed and longer drives. See the USGA website for more particulars.

Fore! Three two one. Let us begin. Golf is a sport taken seriously by many athletes. A lot of men are very competitive when it comes to driving ranges. One very important factor is how far your ball travels on the first shot. This depends on the speed of the ball at impact with the face of the club. Being a beginning golfer myself i know it can be frustrating when you swing as hard as you can and you think you did everything right, and you see the ball about 50 yards in front of you. The two factors here are horizontal speed and vertical speed. In order to get maximum drive or distance from the ball the speed in the horizontal and vertical direction should be the same. Therefore the resultant vector will be at a 45 degree angle with the ground.

Most people would not care about how fast the ball flies after impact, they only care about club speed and distance. The reason some people might be interested in this is because the faster the ball goes the more distance you get. Top golf ball companies such as titleist, pinnacle, and max flight conduct tests with golf balls at different speeds. As you can see, the titleist pro V1x gains a yard or two depending on the speed. In reality no one really thinks about the speed their drives attain its just a fun fact. Just remember if you aim the wrong way and hit a car or another person, the ball can be traveling at about 67 meters per second (150 miles per hour). So be aware of your golf ball speed and aim wisely!

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