Driving Range Fence and Actual Yardage

[RTP419]

Some background to this story, the range I frequent is probably 10 yards downhill and has 100 ft fence at ~235yds. Today I was hitting drivers probably halfway, maybe 60% up the fence. There is a guy next to me who made a genuine comment saying I must hit driver 300, which I absolutely do not.  The question is, what would be the formula to determine “driving range distance”? Or is there too many other factors (trajectory?) that would need to be known to figure it out. 
 

Guess a similar scenario would be if you are trying to cut off a dog leg by carrying some trees, how far would you need to actually carry it to not clip the trees?

 

Thanks in advance and interested to hear some theories. 
 

Ryan
 

 

[RobertBaron]

I don’t think you can figure it out without parameters like ball speed, spin rate and wind. 

[UKGolfer86]

Cant be accurate, but you can use some of the info there to make a guess.

 

You say the range is 10 yards downhil, which is 30 feet.  So the 100ft fence is really only 70 feet from your level.  You are hitting it around 55% from the bottom, which is 55ft.  Take off the 30feet which is below you, leaves 25ft.  Assuming a 40 degree descent angle which is supposed to be optimum, you can use a right angle triangle to work out the rest of the carry, which would be about another 20 feet or 7 yards.  So about 242 yards total carry.

 

This might be complete rubbish, but makes sense to me.... which doesnt say much!

[Hateto3Putt]

[scooterhd2]

Imagine the fence being 100 yards away. You could hit the same spot on the fence with a hybrid, a 6 iron, and with a 9 iron. That alone gives us little information about how far the ball is going.

 

Without other metrics, we can only guess. Otherwise, just tell the guy, "yeah 300 is about right with a smooth swing."

[bladehunter]

Hold on.  I have a 12 year old with some common core math around here somewhere.  I’m sure he can build you a number pyramid and like magic , spit the answer out the bottom !  

[Dr. Block]

Seems like a driving range that short would have the dialed-back range balls. 

[northgolf]

Sounds like the range at Sterling Farms.

[RTP419]

14 hours ago, northgolf said:

Sounds like the range at Sterling Farms.

 

Bingo

[llewol007]

hard to estimate based on missing info. You would need trackman to see how far out it would carry and total distance would be. 

[RTP419]

15 hours ago, Dr. Block said:

Seems like a driving range that short would have the dialed-back range balls. 

 

There is a chance the fence may be taller than 100ft, I just estimated. But the balls are not that terrible and do not seem like restricted flight. Without any sort of tailwind, there are just a people every now and then that I see hitting it over the fence. Also you have to realize that the average Apex of a driver on the PGA tour is 32Yards/ 96 feet, a 100ft fence would hold in the majority of shots.

[Dr. Block]

30 minutes ago, RTP419 said:

 

There is a chance the fence may be taller than 100ft, I just estimated. But the balls are not that terrible and do not seem like restricted flight. Without any sort of tailwind, there are just a people every now and then that I see hitting it over the fence. Also you have to realize that the average Apex of a driver on the PGA tour is 32Yards/ 96 feet, a 100ft fence would hold in the majority of shots.

With a quality range ball, the majority of tour players would airmail that fence every time they wanted to.  I would imagine if your ball was starting down when it hit's the fence, you're probably looking at 250-260 in the air.  Ain't no dust on that number.  That's sending it pretty good. 

Edited October 20, 2020 by Dr. Block

[2bGood]

Seems like a few of the calculus questions I was helping my kid with yesterday. 

 

You don't have enough data to figure it, but you have enough to come with rough a estimate. 

 

On thing I can say for certain is you carry the ball longer than 235.😉