Par4QC The overall distance a ball will fly is not the point.
If you have ever been to the USGA museum in Far Hills, you see the testing. When I was there, they were testing balls for initial velocty with is calculated less than a foot away from the tee the ball was hit from.
The "grid" is far from perfect, undulations etc. But there was a fat white line running right down the middle of the grid. After talking a lot with the proctor, he said, head on out there and stand ten feet on either side of the white line as they also tested for ball positions that would make the ball fade, draw or deviate flight patterns based upon positioning on the test tee. Remember the Polara ball?
Sure enough, every ball landed quite on or near the white line and there was never a fear of being hit, at 317 yards, standing only ten feet away from the line.
The thing is, daily fee players have no damn idea how far they are going to hit the ball which is something that always cracked me up when a typical 19 handicap player took the time to dig out his rangefinder.
One time I told a guy, "measuring" his ball to flag distance at about 150 yards... I said , "you can pick literally any club in your bag as I have seen all of them go about 150."
