Jack won long drive in 1963: 341 yards

[Pkielwa]

Just saw that Nicklaus won the PGA Championship Long-Drive competition in 1963 and 1964. Interestingly, his 341 yard drive in '63, with a persimmon driver, was longer than any of the drives in this week's competition! Funny, Jack talks about the ball needing to be throttled back today.

 

[blugold]

ugh. I have made some of my thoughts pretty well known on Jack has his disdain for modern equipment.

He is a opportunistic old man that loves him some him, and money.

 

[Canadan]

Twitter was having a lot of fun with this yesterday, but the full facts (everything on google image is fact, right?) show quite a different story..

I wonder how Jack managed to hit that ball 341. Tons of roll, wind..... Something special obviously.

From Wiki, his average driving distance was substantially less than that in 1968.

"In 1968, IBM kept PGA Tour statistics for the first time, but did not continue this practice in the immediately subsequent years. Nicklaus led two categories for the 1968 season: he had an average driving distance of 275 yards, and hit 75 percent of greens in regulation; both marks were significantly ahead of rivals.[SUP][61]"[/SUP]

 

[black mamba]

Today jack would be the longest on tour

 

[Grins]

Twitter was having a lot of fun with this yesterday, but the full facts (everything on google image is fact, right?) show quite a different story..

I wonder how Jack managed to hit that ball 341. Tons of roll, wind..... Something special obviously.

From Wiki, his average driving distance was substantially less than that in 1968.

"In 1968, IBM kept PGA Tour statistics for the first time, but did not continue this practice in the immediately subsequent years. Nicklaus led two categories for the 1968 season: he had an average driving distance of 275 yards, and hit 75 percent of greens in regulation; both marks were significantly ahead of rivals.[SUP][61]"[/SUP]

Aw, Dan - why do you have to ruin everything with facts?!

I also seem to recall reading in one of his biographies that Bobby Jones could hit his hickory-shafted driver 300 yards on occasion. And back when Nick Price was at the top of his game, Golf (or Golf Digest - can't remember) assembled some golfers of different handicaps & Nick Price, & let them try hickory shafted clubs. The author was amazed how well Nick hit the ball. Nick even commented "These feel real good."

My take is that the very best players have such phenomenal hand-eye coordination that they can hit even the smallest sweet spot on a club & get the max distance out of whatever they're using.