HOT LIST EXTRA
EFFICIENCY RATING Maria Fassi averaged 277.5 yards in 2024.
I N DRIVER FITTING, THE guiding principle is that ball speed is the most important fac- tor. This seems pretty obvious: Make the ball go faster, and it’s always going to go further. Generally, this should be your mantra, but although ball speed might be fundamental to producing distance, it’s not everything. Some results from our Hot List driver testing show players getting more dis- tance from shots that didn’t yield the highest ball speed. What gives? Well, overall distance is ultimately about the right combination of three ball-flight and swing character- istics: Ball speed is first but launch angle (higher rather than lower) and optimal spin rate for a given launch angle are
The Secret to Distance is Ball Speed, Right? Not Always What Hot List testing showed us about picking a driver BY MIKE STACHURA
the key secondary contributors. In ef- fect, they allow you to maximise your potential for a certain ball speed. Get those last two conditions right, and you’ll have a more efficient ball flight that might produce longer tee shots than with your fastest hits. Let’s take a look at some Hot List player testing results with various drivers as captured by the Rapsodo MLM2Pro launch monitor during the recent Hot List Summit at the Reunion Resort in Orlando. Specifically, three players at three different ability lev- els and swing speeds demonstrated how the most efficient drives featured the optimal mix of ball speed, launch angle and spin rate, not merely the fast- est speed off the clubface.
82 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MARCH/APRIL 2025
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