As a thought experiment, imagine an average person on an average golf course using a pool cue and a tennis racquet to herd a golf ball around 18 holes. Would he be able to approach or even better par?
By average I’m not thinking of a pool shark or a tennis pro. I do know from my various nefarious experiments that you can send a golf ball almost out of sight with a tennis racquet but is a pool cue going to be more accurate than a putter at distances of yards?
On the approach to the hole the racquet would certainly be more accurate than a 9 iron at least in the hands of all but a pro golfer and even they would probably do better with one.
I realize even thinking about such a thing is like taking a dump on St. Andrews grave for keen golfers but would anyone want to take a bet either way?
If you could toss the golf ball up and swat it with the raquet – like serving in tennis – you could probably do a decent job. Nowhere near par – no 100 yard drives – but you could do a completely serviceable and fun job of it and have a nice day on the links.
Pool cue? I don’t see how that would work at all. Give the ball a shot, it’ll roll/bounce/jitterbug two or five yards. It’d take a full day for just one or two holes.
I was once at a defense contractor get-together where they used your thought experiment as an ice=breaker. It was only on the putting greens, but you had to use a different implement for each hole. This included a pool cue. I don’t recall if we had a tennis racquet. Other things were a sledgehammer and a shovel. It was kinda like the round Kevin Costner played in Tin Cup.
Yes, I thought it went without saying that you would use the cue on the greens.
A problem with the cue and golf ball might be the fact that with a standard putter the ball is encountering a flat surface whereas with a cue you have a small rounded surface against a smaller radius ball than that of a pool ball. The question then becomes would any decrease in directional control w/cue be balanced by the better aiming ability with line of sight vision rather than the iffy judgement inherent in using a putter while at standing height above the line from ball to cup?
I would expect the normal advantage one might expect from using the pool cue to aim would be outweighed by the difficulty of actually using one accurately on the ground. Probably, you could be marginally better at short putts, but I doubt there’s much advantage at longer distances (and probably distance control would be more difficult).
Anyone who thinks they can use a tennis racquet to outdrive a golf club is welcome to try. I don’t think you’ll be within a factor of three. :dubious:
Judging by what I remember from hitting a couple of golf balls with a racquet many years ago 100yds would be a very low estimate. When I did this I know I could throw a baseball a shade over 100yds and the golf balls looked quite a bit farther than that. You’re probably right about the long putts though. I guess the only thing for it is to show up at my local country club with a pool cue and tennis racquet and see if they throw me out.
As an aside, there was an old Bugs Bunny cartoon where he’s playing golf. He uses a putter on the green, but he doesn’t use it in the conventional way: He lies down on the ground and uses it like a pool cue, striking with the handle end. Might that possibly even be legal in standard golf, under the Air Bud rule that nothing actually prohibits it?
Added rules apply to putts, as per Rule 16. Among them, you cannot straddle the putt (no croquet-style putting), nor can you be touching the line of the putt (or the extension of that line behind the ball).
Sam Snead, when older, used to comply with the rules while still trying to use something akin to a croquet-style. He would stand facing the hole with his feet to one side of the ball. Then he would swing a long putter pendulum-style, leaning ever-so-slightly to his right so that he was looking more-or-less down the line of the putt. It helped him avoid bending over, as I recall.
Wish I saw this thread earlier - FWIW - a bunch of us teen-aged tennis brats went onto a 375-yard hole and smacked a bunch of golf balls to within 30 to 50 yards of the hole.* A possible factor, along with being leeward, is that myself and a couple others, a few years later, were able to clock in tennis serves upwards of 119 m.p.h.
Beware: if you’re actually silly enough to try this…you are striking a much, much harder object (and smaller, too) making it far easier and quicker to break strings.
Not ready to challenge Maurice Allen yet, maybe.:o
I find that very very hard to believe. Your reported tennis racquet distances would equal the longest drivers in the PGA. Their swing speeds are about 113 mph.
Swing speed != exit speed of the ball. Comparing the amount of impetus a tennis racquet can impart to a golf ball to that which it can impart to a tennis ball might be difficult.
I do tend to doubt the claims of the poster, but that’s because of my own results from whacking golf balls with tennis racquets.
I realize that, the difference in elasticity would make it more complicated. However the length of a golf club is going to give it a big advantage over a tennis racquet.