NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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In an interview after his 2020 U.S. Open victory, Bryson DeChambeau warned of experimentation with longer driver shafts and the potential of added distance to his already mammoth tee shots.
Here at Range Rat, we followed his warnings throughout the fall by reporting on a growing group of players who were contemplating driver shafts well longer than the standard 45 inches. It appeared all but certain that those shafts eventually would become the new norm as players began drawing up plans to keep pace in a distance “arms race.â€
Surprisingly, it didn’t happen.
Only about 3 percent of professional players employ a driver longer than 46 inches, this despite Phil Mickelson winning this year’s PGA Championship with a 47.9-inch driver.
Mickelson proved to be an anomaly. A few star players grinded in the lab trying to make it work – Viktor Hovland, for example, saw considerable speed gains with a 48-inch Ping G425 – but the lack of control proved to be too much for Hovland or pretty much anyone else to stomach.
Was that a signal that extended driver shafts are impractical at anything other than a world long-drive competition? Or would more time allow elite players to adjust other elements of their drivers to figure out a tenable solution for longer shafts?
It looks like we won’t find out the answer. Last week, the USGA and R&A announced a new local rule that allows the option for tournament organizers to limit driver length to 46 inches. The PGA Tour announced it will adopt that rule starting on Jan. 1, 2022.
Interestingly, the strategy we’ve seen many players start to adopt in the past year won’t be affected by this rule.
Take the case of Harry Hall, an Englishman who dresses like DeChambeau while doing a fairly accurate imitation of him hitting a driver as well. Hall mostly makes his home on the Korn Ferry Tour, but we did get a sense of his talent in a top-10 finish at the Shriners Children’s Open earlier this month on the PGA Tour.
Hall tested a 46.5-inch driver but didn’t like the added length for a couple of reasons. First, a 46-inch driver offered a tighter dispersion pattern. Second, the yardage gap between his driver and 3-wood became too wide for his liking.
We imagine pros just wanting to hit their driver as far as possible, but there is such a thing as being uncomfortable with hitting your tee shots longer than 350 yards while your next longest club only goes 270 yards.
To alleviate that concern, Hall added a second Callaway Epic Max LS driver that is only 45.25 inches and goes 285-310 yards, giving him a fairway finder on narrower holes. He also changed out a 5-wood for a 7-wood that goes 245-265 yards, filling in another gap.
This type of strategy has gained traction recently as we’ve seen players add multiple clubs near the top end of their bag. It’s largely why the 7-wood has made a major comeback in the past few years.
The bottom line is that the vast majority of players won’t be too concerned about having a ceiling of 46 inches for the length of their driver. Their bigger concern is mixing and matching clubs to offer more options off the tee.
To do this, players will part with long irons far more than they’ll part with a wedge. It’s becoming less and less common to see a 3-iron in a player’s bag.
Sean Fairholm
