If you watched Bryson DeChambeau at the 2024 US Open, you may have noticed that his driver is airborne – before he even hits the ball.

Why is that?

Bryson’s not the first golfer to hover his driver like this: Greg Norman, Jack Nicklaus and Nick Faldo were hoverers, too, and there are various reasons why golfers do it.

The most common reason golfers chose to hover their driver is because they were worried about the ball falling off the tee, and being penalised. Hovering the driver means that golfers never technically grounded their club, which meant if the ball did move, they wouldn’t be penalised (though this rule has since changed anyway).

Bryson “chipping a few” drives after his round.

187 mph ball speed here.

He’s working on preventing his hips from sliding too much towards the target. Says pushing his body up towards the sky allows him to release his arms more, and square the face easier for his power draw. pic.twitter.com/vFNikBGsRI

— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) June 14, 2024

For Bryson, his reasoning is slightly different. He hovered the club because that’s the height he wants his driver to be at impact.

“I’ve done it forever,” he says. “I’m just positioning my club and body at the level I want it to be at impact.”

Even though the club takes a long route to get back to impact, starting the club where he wants it to finish just made more sense to Bryson than the other way, so that’s why he does it.

MORE GOLF DIGEST US OPEN COVERAGE

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[PHOTO: Walter Iooss Jnr]

Jack Nicklaus’ best year on the PGA Tour was 1972. He won two major championships, the Masters and US Open, and claimed seven total victories. He also lapped the tour in earnings and took home his second (of five) PGA Tour Player of the Year awards.

In the 1970s, Nicklaus was known for his power off the tee. With his driving distance back then, he would outpace many of today’s tour pros, and he was using a persimmon driver and a balata golf ball. Safe to say, Nicklaus knew how to launch it.

Why Jack Nicklaus would dominate modern-day golf

Thinking about this, I realised that his power secrets were probably sitting in Golf Digest’s archives, waiting for someone to find them. After perusing every issue from 1972, I found a bit of wisdom from the Golden Bear’s best tour season that can help you max out your distance.

Nicklaus sometimes was called out for his distinct “flying elbow” on the backswing, where his right elbow would pull away from his side as he swung to the top [pictured above]. At that time, a more around-the-body swing shape was in fashion. But, what looked like bad form to some was actually a key to his huge tee shots.

“My ‘flying right elbow’ and ‘upright’ plane have sometimes been criticised as poor backswing form,” Nicklaus said in an article in the May 1972 issue of Golf Digest. “Well, I could change both – but if I did, I’d certainly lose distance.”

In the article, Nicklaus explained that his signature swing features allowed him to make a wider backswing arc, something he said was a major factor for increasing power potential.

Nicklaus said, “Hugging the elbow to my side would limit my arc and thus my power.”

He also figured out that he could increase the width of his backswing and his body rotation by swinging the club a bit more upright on the backswing.

“I also favour a fairly upright swing plane to widen my arc,” Nicklaus said, “Stretching the club straight back from the ball as far as possible, without swaying, then stretching it as high as possible, gives me a much fuller arc than I would achieve by swinging more around my body on a flatter plane.”

This wide takeaway and full body turn helped Nicklaus deliver power and speed into the ball, which translated into distance – and a lot of it.

Use Jack’s fundamentals to maximise your distance

You can use Nicklaus’ swing principles to get longer off the tee but consider this warning.

“If you decide to try for a bigger arc by swinging on a more upright path, the danger at first might be a tendency to sway or lift your shoulders instead of coiling them and stretching your arms,” Nicklaus said.

To prevent yourself from swaying or lifting in the takeaway, Nicklaus advised gripping the ground with your spikes and feeling like you’re stretching your clubhead away from the ball in a smooth, one-piece motion. Your clubhead, arms, shoulders and hips should feel like they move as one as you do this, according to Nicklaus.

Voila! Now you know how to achieve the powerful backswing positions that helped the Golden Bear blister the ball by his playing competitors.

The post How this backswing ‘fault’ supercharged Jack Nicklaus’ golf swing appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

By the time I bumped into Stephan Jaeger in the middle of last season, he had jumped from outside 180th in Strokes Gained/Driving to inside the top 50 in the matter of months. He would end the season inside the top 40, with ambitions for more:

“Before I was always trying to keep my card,” he said. “Now, I want to get to the point where I can be a top-30 player out here.”

So far this season, he’s inside the top 30 in Strokes Gained/Driving, and a newly minted PGA Tour winner with a ticket to Augusta. So, safe to say, he’s on the right track.

Jaeger’s rise has been fuelled by an increase in driving distance. Admitting he was “pretty much the worst driver on tour”, Jaeger hired fitness coach Mike Carroll and began forcing himself to swing harder. It boosted his swing speed and, interestingly, also his accuracy. He wasn’t just swinging faster; he was swinging better.

Final 10 balls, swing as hard as you can

JAEGERBOMB!

Stephan Jaeger ranks 8th in driving distance this season pic.twitter.com/thzQlcEdyR

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) April 1, 2024

The next time I bumped into Jaeger, he was on the range at the FedEx Cup St Jude Classic, swinging as hard as he could with a driver on the range before his practice round.

Turns out, that’s become part of his pre-round warm-up routine: before every round, Jaeger will reserve a handful of balls – about 10 of them – and hit them as hard as he can before wrapping up his range session, and heading to the course.

Hitting 10 ‘Jaegerbombs’ in the final moments before you go play is a routine you can adopt, too. And there are some good reasons why you should consider it.

1. It gets you fully warm and loose

Swinging hard gets your heard racing; your blood pumping. If it’s your goal to warm-up, then exerting yourself will literally help warm you up.

2. It establishes your speed ceiling for the day

Going all-out with a few drives before your round is a kind of “speed priming”. It’s part of the popular Stack System training program, and it’s a process that helps you find both the top speed you’re working with that day, and what your comfortable cruising speed is.

Speed Priming can be used before a competitive round to potentiate your neuromuscular system. It both maximises your speed potential for that day and allows you to attain your preferred on course speed with less perceived effort.

3. It stops you getting lazy and complacent

Often, the worst technical flaws in golfers’ swings arise from laziness. They’re not engaging their muscles, so bad habits sneak in. It’s why Jaeger said his swing actually started improving the harder he started to swing:

“It definitely helped my swing in a sense to where I’m in a way better position at the top,” he says. “My misses used to be foul balls. Now they’re in the rough.”

4. It gets rid of nervous energy

It’s easy to get nervous before a round. Taking a few lashes expels lots of that nervous energy in the final moments. There’s value in that, especially when you consider that there’s evidence one of the biggest ways first-tee jitters reveals itself with shortened, more cautious backswings.

5. It gets you out of golf swing mode

The driving range is a place where golfers can lose themselves in technical thoughts, and stress over their golf swings. ‘Swinging for the fences’ gives you a feeling of freedom you can take to the course. You can’t think about anything technical when all you’re trying to do is swing hard.

“I feel a John Daly backswing, and let it go,” he says.

The post This 10-ball ‘Jaegerbombs’ warm-up can upgrade your speed – and your golf swing appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

In the past six to nine months, something terrible happened to me.

I’m not talking about a disease or marital problems or an issue at work. No, it was something far, far worse than that.

I lost a lot of distance off the tee.

Thanks to my world-class short game, I was able to mask those issues and continue to shoot in the 80s consistently. But when you’re barely poking it about 200 metres, it’s very difficult to shoot in the low 80s, and almost impossible to break 80 on a regular basis like I want to.

My driving woes saw me begin the year as a 6.9 handicap and balloon almost all the way to a 12.

Fortunately I was able to claw back to 9, and that was before I had the pleasure of meeting up with three-time major champion Padraig Harrington at the PNC Championship in December.

At 52 years young, Harrington is hitting it as far as he ever as, a byproduct of both the modern golf ball as well as the fact he’s increased his swing speed considerably thanks to hard work and dedication. As a 31-year-old, I have no excuse to not be hitting it far, too. I just needed a little help from Paddy to get on the right path.

During a 20-minute lesson on the back of the range at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Florida, Harrington gave me a number of key drills and swing thoughts to focus on that have already helped me gain some extra speed with my driver – six miles per hour during this lesson, to be exact. First order of business was to go from a weak slice to a power draw, something Harrington helped me pull off in less than two minutes with a drill that requires only a tee and a basic swing thought: “Open the door, close the door.”

And here’s how it works.

Paddy’s draw tip

Paddy had me “open the door” and then “close the door”, essentially getting me to close the clubface since I had it wide open at impact. We accomplished this with a drill where Paddy had me swing at a tee in the ground to promote coming inside to out. Here’s how to setup the drill if you want to try it yourself:

1. Set up to the golf ball like you normally would
2. Place a tee in the ground just a little in front and off the inside of your trail foot
3. Practise swinging to that spot and making contact with the ground/tee
4. Try it for real and think “open the door” (backswing), “close the door” (downswing/release)

Padraig making me believe the tee off the inside of my foot was actually the ball helped me achieve that “close the door” feeling I’ve been missing for months. It felt like I was closing the clubface too early; in reality, I needed to feel that to help me square up the face in time for impact.

As you’ll see below, it took all of two swings for me to go from a (very) weak slice to a tight little draw. Golf nirvana, in other words.

You can watch the full video below:

The post How this Padraig Harrington tip turned my weak slice into a power draw in two minutes appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

It’s impossible to be a golf fan nowadays without hearing the word distance. It’s everywhere all the time, all at once. And you may find yourself wondering why. What is all the fuss about? Why is distance so important, and are people saying it’s too important?

While most people doubted that distance was important, it was never seen as a kind of catch-all solution. Distance was important, yes, but so was hitting fairways, and chipping, and putting.

Then one day, this guy came along. An economics professor from Columbia University called Mark Broadie. This guy is one of the smartest men in golf today.

Broadie discarded the crude old stats, things like total driving and fairways hit, and developed a slate of advanced analytics for golf and then began showing the world what they revealed.

In his book Every Shot Counts: Using the Revolutionary Strokes Gained Approach to Improve Your Golf Performance and Strategy, Broadie made his conclusion clear: that “putting is overrated”. Distance is king. And that the best strategy is one that is very, very aggressive off the tee. Even if it means missing more fairways. Bomb away, the maths is on your side – for pros and amateurs alike.

To understand why this is true, imagine two golfers.

There’s Golfer A, who ranks in the top third on tour in accuracy and the bottom third in distance.

And Golfer B, who ranks in the bottom third on tour in accuracy but the top third in distance.

If they both play the same hole 10 times, let’s call it a 450-yard par 4, Golfer A…

• Will hit his ball into the fairway six times and the rough four times.
• From 160 yards in the fairway, four of his six shots from will finish on the green, to an average of about 26 feet.
• Two of his four shots from the rough will find the green, for an average of 29 feet.
• Of the four shots that missed the green, he’ll get about two or three up-and-down.

Put it all together based on make and three-putting rates, and Golfer A will play this hole between even-par and one-over.

The longer-hitting Golfer B on the other hand…

• Will hit his ball into the fairway five times and the rough five times.
• From 20 yards closer (140), he’ll hit about four of those five shots onto the green for an average of 20 feet.
• He’ll hit half the five shots from the rough onto the green too, to about 26 feet.

So even though the longer golfer is hitting one less fairway than the shorter golfer, he’s hitting the same number of greens – and hitting it closer to the hole from both spots, because of that extra 20-yard distance gain.

Add it all up the same way, and Golfer B is playing it between even and one-under par. A small advantage, but one that adds up over time.

This isn’t just a pro golfer thing. It’s a principle that is even more true for amateur golfers like me and you. One recent analysis by golf stat tracking firm Arccos found that an average of 10 yards off the tee, regardless of accuracy, automatically leads to one stroke less on your scoring average.

That’s because amateur golfers are more inconsistent, even from perfect lies, so all things equal it’s just better to be closer.

That added inconsistency also means the disadvantage of being in the rough actually lessons for higher handicaps. In some strange cases, it actually disappears altogether. Pros may hate the unpredictability of fliers, but that ball being sightly teed up by the rough can often make life easier for amateurs.

Anyway this Golfer A–Golfer B is just one example of why the distance advantage is so important. It doesn’t account for things like par 3s, where all golfers are playing from the same spot, but the longer golfer has the luxury of hitting a shorter iron than the shorter hitter.

Or par 5s, which the longer golfer can start getting closer to the green in two than the shorter golfer.

Or how anyone can have a bad accuracy day and fall into a ball-striking slump, but nobody’s going to wake up one day and magically hit the ball 50 yards longer.

It’s also not entirely true that shorter hitters are automatically always straighter. Guys like Ludvig Aberg and Victor Hovland and Keith Mitchell are both longer and straighter than the tour average.

And while modern club technology plays a role, this would be true even with older equipment. Golfers like Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman and Tiger Woods. They were the best players of their era, and just look at how hard they swung at the golf ball. They were doing this; we just didn’t have any stats to realise it at the time.

The only way that stops working is when golfers start hitting lots of ‘wide’ balls, and by that we mean not behind a tree, or into a bunker so deep that you can’t get out of it, or into a water hazard or out-of-bounds.

Golfers like Nick Faldo used to tear their swings apart in a search for more accuracy, but now golfers are transforming their swings to squeeze out more distance, and it keeps working, over and over and over again.

It’s why you see coaches, pros and amateur golfers increasingly:

• Hitting the gym specifically for golf
• Trying to make faster backswings.
• Making wider backswings
• Ditching their backswing pauses
• Lifting their left heel
• Doing more speed training

It’s all in a pursuit of getting longer. Because it plays to the one ultimate truth in golf: that the closer you are to the hole, the more likely you are to hit your next shot into the hole. That’s true at the pro level, and it’s especially true at the amateur level.

The post The new-school driving strategy that changed golf – and can help your game appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

Find more fairways with this controlled tee shot.

There are times when just getting a drive in the short grass is the priority. Windy days come to mind, or tight landing areas. Even super-long par 3s. When you need a tee shot you can rely on, try my go-to technique to produce a lower ball flight that stays in play.

Think of this as a “blanket drive”, because when you swing, you should feel like you’re “covering” the ball
[above]. I want my chest to stay over the top of the ball through the hitting area. Honestly, it’s more like an iron shot than a standard drive. You play the ball a touch further back than normal in your stance, tee it a little lower and grip down for more control. When you swing, commit to it. Don’t try to steer the ball in play by holding off your through-swing. You’re not trying to blister the ball, but you’re still making a full backswing and follow-through.

If you hit this shot right, the ball will fly low and fairly straight with a little peel-off from left to right. If you allow for that, you should be playing your next shot from a great spot with the chance to score on a tough hole. 

Taylor Moore won the PGA Tour’s Valspar Championship in March and had three other top-five finishes in 2023.  

Photo by  j.d. Cuban

The post Taylor Moore: Cover It For Better Accuracy appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

The Las Vegas Grand Prix happened last weekend, and it got us thinking if it was possible to measure the power that golfers create in their swing the same way engineers measure the horsepower of a car’s engine.

At first, the task seemed simple enough, but after talking with a few engineers, physicists and experts on the topic, it turns out the formula is a bit more complicated than we’d thought. Lucky for us, Michael Jacobs, one of Golf Digest‘s 50 Best Teachers, has already got the process down to a science. Literally.

According to Jacobs, calculating the horsepower, or HP, of a golf swing is an extremely detailed and personal process. It requires measurements of the golfer’s physical proportions, exact data from their swing and measurements of the club itself.

However, because Jacobs has helped many players determine the HP of their swing over the years, he was able to share the following stats to give you an idea of what your HP could be.

Horsepower for driver

Long-drive champion – 6.8 horsepower
PGA Tour pro – 5.6 horsepower
5-handicap male – 4.03 horsepower
13-handicap male – 3.1 horsepower
18-handicap female – 2.3 horsepower

If you’re interested in measuring the HP of your swing, Jacobs shared a bit of insight into the physics of it all.

“Power is the rate at which you are doing mechanical work in the golf swing. In this case, it is the club which we are doing the mechanical work on,” Jacobs says, “Mechanical work is a way to explain Newton’s second law of motion. Force X distance and torque X angular displacement are the metrics that are used in deriving mechanical work.”

If you’re not as interested in the science of it all, but you’re looking to get some more power out of your swing, Jacobs says to start by focusing on your sequencing and timing.

To train the timing of your swing and learn how to generate the most speed and power at impact, Jacobs says to try his driver half-shot drill.

Driver half-shot

Get into a normal setup with your driver. Take your club to the top of your backswing, then swing down, stopping right before impact. Do this a few times, taking note of where your driver is positioned when you reach the lowest point of your swing.

Now, ask yourself, am I calibrating my club to strike in the optimal position each time?

The second half of this drill will teach you to calibrate your impact point. To do that, Jacobs says to make half swings, no higher than the hip, with your driver. These smaller swings will help you practise ‘peaking your speed’ at impact, which will translate to you maximising your speed at the ball on full shots with your driver. Practise these small swings for a few minutes before testing out full-swing shots.

The post There’s a way to measure your swing’s horsepower. There’s also a way to increase it appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

On paper Gordon Sargent doesn’t look like the kind of kid who could revolutionise the game of golf.

A skinny, 80-kilogram economics major from Vanderbilt University, Sargent has a seemingly otherworldly ability to do something that pros and amateurs alike dream of: hit the ball unbelievably far.

Sargent’s driving distances are so incredible—at times approaching 400 yards at points—that it’s plunging some of golf’s old guard into a kind of existential crises about distance in the game of golf, and breaking the brains of golf fans everywhere.

But what’s the science behind Gordon Sargent’s unbelievable speed? How can he hit the ball so far? Watch the video below to take a closer look…

Gordon Sargent offered a glimpse into what he’s capable of at the 2022 NCAA Championship. On the first playoff hole, a 520-yard par-5, Sargent hit a drive 380 yards, leaving himself just 140 yards for his approach. He wedged it to five feet, and made the putt to win.

A hard hole, which he made look easy.

So, how can Sargent squeeze so many yards out of a relatively normal-looking frame?

The truth is there’s no one reason why a golfer can hit a ball 350 metres or 380 yards. Sargent does lots of things well in his golf swing which give him his unbelievable speed. But perhaps the key move in his golf swing comes right here, at the top of his backswing.

Look closely and you’ll see as his hands and arms complete his backswing, his hips begin unwinding towards the target.

It’s a small movement, but this helps Sargent create an incredible amount of torque, which he uses to create such incredible speed.

The reason why is because of a concept called X-Factor, a really innovative breakthrough that was created and popularised by the legendary teacher Jim McLean.

X-Factor is a simple measurement in the difference between a golfer’s shoulder turn, and their hip turn, at the top of the backswing. If a golfer turns their shoulders 100 degrees on the backswing, and turns their hips 50 degrees, the difference is 50 degrees, so their X-Factor is 50 degrees. As of 2013, the Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) says tour players have an average X-Factor of 42 degrees.

But on the downswing, like you can see in Sargent’s swing, the hips start unwinding before the shoulders, so the X-Factor actually increases slightly, by an average of about five degrees for tour players, TPI says.

That’s called the X-Factor Stretch, and it’s a big power source in your golf swing.

Basically every undersized, long hitter has a really big X-Factor Stretch. John Daly had a huge X-Factor. You could tell young Ben Hogan had one too. Jaime Sadlowski has a crazy huge X-Factor, and so do Bubba Watson and Rory McIlroy.

And that X-Factor Stretch is super-important, because it torques the muscles in your body into a tight, tense knot, read to blow. A bit like like an archer, pulling back the bow as tight as he can, and then letting it go.

That’s what’s going on in Sargent’s golf swing. We’re not sure of his exact numbers, but you can see his shoulders have turned well past 90 degrees. If we use Rory McIlroy’s 2014 swing as a reference point, Rory’s shoulder turn was measured at close to 110 degrees, so I bet Sargent is something similar, meaning his X-Factor could reach a number close to 60 or 70.

And then, as Sargent finishes turning his shoulders, he begins firing his hips. That increases the angle between his shoulders and hips, which stretches apart his upper and lower body, and then catapults his arms down with incredible speed.

And it’s catapulting Sargent’s rise to the very top, too. Since that NCAA victory, Sargent played in the Masters, finished as low amateur at the U.S. Open and went unbeaten in the Walker Cup at the Old Course. Sargent is strong, athletic, flexible, speedy. And get ready, because Sargent just earned his PGA Tour card. Remember the name, remember the swing.

Once again, you can watch the full video here:

The post The science behind golf’s new ‘super-bomber’ – and what you can learn from it appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Richard Heathcote]

One of the many subtle brilliances of the Ryder Cup is that the build up lingers for a day longer than it should.

Players arrive on site the Sunday before, just as they would for a major championship and did for this Ryder Cup at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club. Players on both sides crawl through their two nine-hole practice rounds and media obligations, and then Thursday rolls around. Though rather than the tournament getting underway as it would ordinarily, there’s another day to wait around, doing the same thing. Players go from ready to waiting; thinking, about what happens next.

Then, on Friday, it’s finally time. What once felt lingering is now an explosion of excitement and emotion as they arrive on the first tee. It’s such an epic ebb and flow that it sends players into a spiral. Their heart rate spikes wildly, and their breath shortens rapidly. Players feel a level of nervousness that they never have before—like when Scottie Scheffler said he couldn’t feel his arms on the first tee of the Ryder Cup.

The Ryder Cup: No Pressure

There’s no pressure like Ryder Cup first-tee pressure. And when your task is hitting the opening tee shot for your team on Friday morning, the nerves heighten even more.

How do players navigate the terrifying task of hitting a golf ball, with millions of people watching and feeling more nervous than you’ve ever been? Just ask Justin Rose…

When you’re nervous, try to go slow

Rose isn’t hitting the opening tee shot this time around—at the 2023 contest, that task will fall to one of either Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns, or Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton—but he’s hit the first shot of the Ryder Cup on three different occasions. He’s been in the first group of a session an astonishing nine times. For close to a decade, Rose was the steady hand Europe turned to hit the shot.

And for Rose, it all comes down to one thing: trying to go really, really slow.

“When the lights are bright and the music is loud, you tend to subconsciously do things faster,” Rose says. “Be aware of that psychological, natural reaction.”

Rose says that when you have a task to perform under intense pressure—whether it’s hitting a golf ball or something that extends beyond golf—your body will naturally try to ramp up, quickly. It’s an instinctual stress reaction designed to help us run away or fight our way out of danger. Feeling like you’re going slower will feel tedious and over-exaggerated at times at times, Rose says, but it will counter-act your human tendency to go fast, and bring you back to normal pace.

“Suck in some air, walk a little slower, try to bring your breathing pace down and just do everything a little slower generally… focus on the basics,” he says. “There’s no easy way to get through it.”

• • •

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com

The post 2023 Ryder Cup: How to hit golf’s most terrifying tee shot, according to a player who has done it 3 times appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

If Brian Harman’s golf game was a car, his wouldn’t have the fastest topline speed. Place it in a drag race with any number of other players, and Harman would be left in the dust. Golf is in a moment of peak horsepower. The more if it you have, the better.

Even Harman knows it: “I’m 36 years old. The game is getting younger. All these young guys coming out, they hit it a mile. The game is going longer. That seems to be the way it’s going.”

And yet in the midst of this race for more speed, it was Harman who couldn’t be caught at Royal Liverpool, winning by six shots. It’s a fact that belies another: not all cars are designed the same way. Some are, indeed, built to be fast. Others are designed to be more manoeuvrable.

That’s what Harman is. At 5-foot-6 and a lean 68 kilograms, the diminutive lefty carries an average clubhead speed of 109 miles an hour, which puts him in the bottom 10 percent on the PGA Tour. He’s not built for straight line speed, like 6-foot-8 amateur Christo Lamprecht, who earned low-amateur honours as Harman took possession of the claret jug.

Instead, Harman has devised an entire strategy around what he can do best: win around the corners. It has led to 12-year career on the PGA Tour and wins at every level he’s played. And now, an Open championship victory.

Driver everywhere and anywhere

Harman ranks 142nd on the PGA Tour in driving distance, but he gets around this perceived disadvantage with a pretty simple strategy: he hits driver all the time, as much as he can, at every opportunity.

While Harman’s peers are dropping back to hit 3-wood and 2-irons, either for more control or to pursue safety, Harman pushes himself to hit the driver at every opportunity.

It’s an intentional strategy that shows up in his stats. Look at the driving distance statistic, which only measures a certain holes – longer, wider holes, where most golfers are hitting drivers. It’s the best way to do it when you’re trying to showcase who actually hits it the longest. And that’s where Harman ranks 142nd in that category.

But now look at all drives – the average distance of literally every tee shot hit on par 4s and par 5s. You’ll see that Harman ranks 98th, within 0.3 metres of tour average.

Here’s another stat to look at. For the amount of distance Harman’s tee shots carry on par-4 holes, he ranks above the tour average, and inside the top 80.

What do you see from this? Put Harman in a driving contest against any number of his peers, with a wide open field in front of them, he would lose. Yet because Harman is ultra-aggressive with the number of drivers he does hit, he lands in the top 50 on the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained: Off The Tee (48th coming into The Open), again while being one of the shorter hitters in golf.

After watching Harman seemingly make all the important putts he looked at during his stay in England, you might say his short game won him the day, but his driving made it possible in the first place.

“If a player hits it 320 yards with their driver and only 280 with their 3-wood, and another player hits it 290 with their driver but hits driver more often, they effectively hit the ball further simply because they’re playing more correct strategically,” says Scott Fawcett, the founder of DECADE Golf course management systems. “A shorter player effectively has a governor on how much they can gain off the tee, but if they are hitting driver more often than a longer player, the longer player’s advantage is heavily negated.

“Proper strategy should feel very aggressive off the tee,” he says.

RELATED: Two mind-bending stats from Brian Harman’s win at Hoylake

Embracing versatility

Of course, Harman wouldn’t be able to hit driver everywhere if he sprayed the ball around wildly. Players can get away with being long and relatively crooked, but short-and-crooked generally isn’t an advisable strategy.

Harman does indeed hit a lot of fairways – 14th in driving accuracy coming into this week, and first in the field this past week. The key to this, says Harman’s coach Justin Parsons, is versatility.

Harman’s peers aren’t hitting fewer drivers by choice. When they do, it’s because they’re seeking more accuracy, or working a different shot that is easier with a shorter club. Harman and Parsons spend a huge portion of their driver practice learning to hit those shots with his drivers. It’s harder than simply dropping down a club, but for Harman, it’s essential.

“He’s a tremendously talented, versatile player, and he works very hard on it,” Parsons says. “He does hit driver a lot more, because he’s able to dial it back slightly when he needs to but still hit it longer than other players’ 3-wood. He can hit a draw when he needs to reach for more distance. He can hit a little low ones and to fit drives through little gaps in holes, when other players can’t move their drivers.”

This skill versatility is forged by countless hours on the range. The discipline of application comes through choice. The ability to execute through some level of innate talent. The combination transforms a player with what is, on paper, a potentially fatal flaw in the modern era, into a major champion.

“I’ll let y’all figure it out.” Harman said at his winning press conference after a question about his lack of driving distance, his eyes glancing to the claret jug sitting in front of him. “But there ain’t no problem.”

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