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Have you ever not played driver?

Yup couldn't hit my cobra worth a crap so just used UW. @Canadan didn't use a driver at ballyhack
 
I could easily play my home course without a driver. But since I hit 65-70% of my FWs then why not carry one!
 
Scooby45 said:
So a guy at the sim last night was contemplating not playing driver for a bit this year. And then this afternoon during a Callaway event I was getting driver like numbers with a 3 wood. Enough that I was joking with the rep I should just ignore driver and he didn’t disagree.

So I wanted to throw it out there. Have you done it? Why? How did it go?
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My driver has always been in my bag 99.9% of the time.

Do I use it on all long par 4s, and par 5s? No. It just depends on how the fairway lines up in front of me.

The only time my D was not in my bag was when I played my all iron bag (2 - lw), using my 3w as my driver. That was a few decades ago.
 
Riverboat said:
When I was coaching, I did many challenges like that with the kids to keep practice rounds interesting. Other coaches said their kids did better without the driver. I never found that, but they did play better when I took away their lob wedges. You'd think they would figure out that keeping the ball closer to the ground in the short game was good for their game, but even with coach pointing out the difference, they'd be right back to flubbing the LW in the next match.
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I kinda disagree with the lob wedge thing.. one of the courses I play is not in the best of conditions and has really small greens. in both cases a lob wedge is better suited.. when I try a bump and run it always takes really bad hops and very inconsistent role out.. also with smaller greens lofted wedge helps me get it up/down and less roll (don’t roll of the green)..
 
I seem to go through bouts of not wanting to use my driver because I crush my 3W. However I’ve been getting much more consistent with my driver and just have been spending time working on my timing. I think it will always be a battle but it pays off with distance. It’s hard to score when you’re giving up so much off the tee.

I love some of the posts about not using driver on sims. My Stealth driver sometimes gives the weirdest results with Trackman. I hit a drive that should have been decent and Trackman sent it directly to the left of the tee box. Curious if there is anything with the materials and how Trackman reads it.
 
merlebo02 said:
I kinda disagree with the lob wedge thing.. one of the courses I play is not in the best of conditions and has really small greens. in both cases a lob wedge is better suited.. when I try a bump and run it always takes really bad hops and very inconsistent role out.. also with smaller greens lofted wedge helps me get it up/down and less roll (don’t roll of the green)..
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Never said there wasn't a place for the lob wedge, just that they clearly scored better when I took them away. I think in general they are vastly overused and more people would do better to keep the ball as close to the ground as possible in most situations, but there are no hard and fast rules in golf for every player or every course.
 
First time I ever broke 80 my buddy tossed my driver in the trunk of his car right before the round and told me “you’re hitting your 3 wood today”. Shot 78. Took me better than 10 years to finally break 80 again
 
Slowmo said:
First time I ever broke 80 my buddy tossed my driver in the trunk of his car right before the round and told me “you’re hitting your 3 wood today”. Shot 78. Took me better than 10 years to finally break 80 again
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I use my driver because I hold onto the hope delusion that I will someday be able to control it.
 
Not play a driver? We are talking par 3 courses right?
 
I have done it a lot. I shoot better 90% of the time. Did I mention driver is my weakest club?


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I’ve always had one in my bag and probably the most consistent club for me the last 10 years or so. One time in competition I stuck with 3 wood off the tee because I was getting plenty of distance for the course and found every fairway when I was struggling with the driver
 
2022 performance averages:

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I can’t imagine taking my driver out of play. It’s not always on fire but it definitely earns its spot
 
That post said:
I think it would be an interesting experiment. Most of the time the biggest trouble I get in on the course is penalties off the tee with the driver.

I'm curious to find out if I see any significant difference in scoring. I'm fortunate enough to be able to play a fair amount of golf. Usually a couple of times a week. For this experiment, I will be going driverless for my Wednesday rounds when the season starts up in a couple of months. I'm not sure how long I'll run the experiment for at least a month. We'll see what the results are.

If @Scooby45 doesn't mind I'll bookmark this thread and use it to document my process when the season starts.

Spoiler
I was the guy at the sim :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
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I also forgot to mention that I'm most likely going to not carry any fairway woods this season. It'll be a 16º Utility/Hybrid, 19º Hybrid as my longest clubs before 5i. I generally hit my 19º club around 210y carry. Expect to get maybe 225 out of the 16º that I haven't purchased yet.

Wednesdays are going to be interesting.
 
yes and no.

yes in the sense that i was so bad off the tee i never wanted to hit driver so i rarely did.

no because technically the driver was still in the bag even though i rarely hit it.

it’s not fun to struggle off the tee. not fun at all.
 
I’ve put it in timeout during the course of a round when it was acting like a psycho ex-girlfriend, but I’ve never been without a driver in my bag.
 
Since driver and the putter are my best clubs wouldn't even consider such a thing.
 
Yes - when I played previously - 3i was the longest club in the bag. I was younger and much fitter and could hit my 4i as far as most of my playing partners hit driver anyway - none of us were great players mind you....

Coming back to the game I currently carry a driver but am considering swapping for an extra short iron (creating a combo set) to reduce the gapping at the bottom of the bag. This would be for my home course where accuracy both off the tee (every fairway is tree lined both sides) and into our small elevated greens is key to scoring well. 3W would be the longest club and my teaching pro thinks this might be a good idea as well.

A
 
Oh absolutely. I went a good part of a season a couple of years back without hitting the driver most rounds. Partly because I had a driver that just wasn't a great for me and had very little confidence in, but also because it was the first time I had a 3w in the bag and couldn't believe that it was so much more consistent than the driver. Now I'm a lot more confident with the big stick, but truth be told I'm not getting a huge amount more distance with the driver.
 
I've done it because my driver was the wild thing. One round I used my 3W. At first it was magic. And then it was tragic. Finally we called it quits.
 
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