Let’s be honest. For someone so slight, measuring in 3 inches shorter than your average tour pro, Rory McIlroy does give the ball a mighty wallop.
His average driving distance is well over the 300 yard mark and recently he has hit a few fully out of sight, with a tee shot at The Open Championship measuring in at 396 yards and another at the previous week’s Scottish Open at Royal Aberdeen stretching to a whopping 436 yards!
When you see guys with the physical stature of your Dustin Johnson’s and Gary Woodland’s, you kind of expect them to hit it a long…LONG way but how does wee Rory pack so much punch?
Well, according to research carried out by Dave Phillips at the Titleist Performance Institute a few years back; it’s all in the hips. While amateur golfers rotate their hips through the swing at an average speed of about 350 degrees per second, Rory uncoils at more than double that speed. His range of motion from the start of his backswing all the way through to the point at which he unleashes the clubhead on the back of the ball is also much larger than average players, making that speed all the more impressive. Coupled with his incredible natural timing – Rory’s hip move would be no use at all if he wasn’t able to perfectly sync it with the movement of his torso, arms and clubhead during the downswing – that coiling and uncoiling produces a HELL of a lot of clubhead speed.
Let’s have a look at the numbers…
(All stats accredited to Dave Phillips at the Titleist Performance Institute)
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