I have written in the past about how far Old Tom Morris might hit the ball with modern equipment and I started that piece by saying that we’ll never know as Old Tom has been dead for quite a long time.
But it was fun to speculate. I have also speculated in the past about how far Jack Nicklaus would hit the ball with modern equipment.
The thing is that, technique has changed over the years as equipment has evolved. When we look back and speculate, we have to take into account that modern players swing harder and faster than pros of bygone eras.
To get the most from hickory shafts, top players of the late 19th and early 20th centuries used slower and more rhythmical swings than the top players of today.
Hickory is more flexible than steel and thus, hickory clubs require the user to play with less speed. If a top tour player of today, Bryson or Rory for example were to really go at a ball using hickory shafts and a modern ball, they would be likely to break the club.
When I was asked to write this piece, the first thing I thought was… ‘Well, actually, unlike some of the more speculative distance pieces I’ve written in the past, I can answer this one, as I have seen Bryson using hickory shafts.’
Last year, he took on a challenge against Garrett Clark to see how he’d get on playing with a persimmon driver and hickory clubs.
Quiz - How well do you know Old Tom Morris?
He shot level par for nine holes and that included getting on to a par-5 in two, when he hit a 260 yard driver followed by a 250 yard driver off the deck.
But that was the persimmon driver that actually had a steel shaft. He was hitting the longer hickory irons between 170 and 200 yards.
We know that when Rory McIlroy used a persimmon driver in a challenge at the Scottish Open that we have previously written about on this site, he carried the ball 255 yards and Rory hits the ball a similar distance to Bryson with modern equipment.
Using a hickory shafted driver and a modern ball, Bryson would likely be able to carry it somewhere between 240 and 270 yards depending on the wind, rolling out further than that of course.
If he had been using a gutty ball from the last century, it wouldn’t go that far. Maybe more like 235-245 yards.
If Bryson really went for a shot with a hickory driver and was prepared to risk breaking it, which he wasn’t prepared to do in his nine-hole challenge with Garrett Clark, I think he might be able to hit a modern ball over 300 yards with a bit of run.
I think if he was playing, using a modified technique to suit the old equipment, he would hit an old hickory driver around the 260 yard mark.
