To hit a 300-yard drive in absolutely perfect, neutral conditions a player will need a swing capable of making a perfect contact at 108 mph. That will propel the ball at around 180mph from the point at the point of contact. For most players that would be one for the record books, but professionals are, of course, capable of hitting far beyond this speed. Partially this is attributable to years of practice and extremely high-grade club heads, but weather conditions also play an essential role. Here we’ll take a look at how fast golf balls can travel, and the major factors that can increase and decrease velocity. infairwayshop.com
What Is The Fastest A Golf Ball Has Travelled?
This is an interesting question as there are obviously limits on how far a human can hit the ball. At present, the highest speed recorded drive shot was hit by Ryan Winther. In 2013 he managed to drive 349.38 km/h at a driving range. To put this into context, the highest average over a season belongs to Connor Powers with a comparatively paltry 246km/h back in 2014. So, even the pro’s can be bested by one-off specialist hitters – but of course, there is far more to the game than sheer power! There are even rules that limit the distance a player can legally hit the ball – enforced around 0.2% of the time.
Let’s Look At The Physics
So humans can so far ‘only’ make a golf ball travel so far. No doubt records will be broken over time, but the fact remains that it will be by tiny increments and not anything far beyond the existing distance.
Taking physics into account, and again in ideal conditions, for a golf ball to hit maximum velocity/distance it needs to have a contact that is a perfect balance between horizontal and vertical speeds. This will provide distance – which is pretty much all that anyone cares about in golf – but is not necessarily going to as fast as one can travel. Air resistance and gravity are always going to immediately start to reduce the speed from the point of impact, explaining why in some circumstances a player can hit the ball with tremendous power yet for only moderate distances.
Assume we were instead going to hit the ball as hard as possible along a perfectly smooth flat. One may expect that it would go faster – but this is not the case. Even the most perfect surface is going to provide friction. To the blind eye, it may appear faster, but all the way as the ball travels it will be bumping, and gradually reducing in speed.
So Is There An Exact Figure?
Terminal velocity may again seem like a straightforward option – but that pesky wind resistance causes trouble again! If dropped from a plane in windless conditions, the fastest speed a golf ball will fall at is a mere 115.87 km/h. So clearly, the only way to measure the absolute speed that a ball can reach depends entirely upon the force being applied to it at the point of initial contact.
So for the sake of argument, and without getting bogged down in the use of catapults and explosive thrusts, we’ll just have to conclude that Mr. Winther and his eye-boggling record well deserves his place in the Guinness Book of Records.