Writen by Martin Vousden
One of golf’s best-known aphorisms is ‘Drive for show, putt for dough’ but your chance to make a putt is somewhat reduced if you can’t find the fairway, and then the green. At the very highest level the quality of ball-striking is such that tournaments are often won by the guy who has a hot putter that week, but week in and out driving is the bedrock on which a golfer’s game is built. Sam Snead went as far as to say that you should only practice driving and putting.
And as with putting, many players can drive the ball well for a limited period but few can maintain consistent excellence over the course of a career that lasts decades. No-one can do it well all the time – even the absolute best have their off days and weeks – but these golfers did it better for longer than anyone else who lived.
20. Harold Hilton
The Englishman with the marvelous middle name of ‘Horsfall’ never turned pro but won two Opens at the end of the 19th century, four Amateur championships and a US Amateur, in the days when the very best were from the unpaid ranks. His most conspicuous quality was the straightness of his driving.
19. Tom Watson
Has a fast tempo but a great, simple, repetitive technique that gets the job done time and again. The greatest Major ever – 1977s duel in the sun with Nicklaus – was decided on the 72nd hole when he split the fairway to set up his winning birdie. Like many in this list the quality of his ball-striking never left him but the golfing gods decide that very few can have it all for too long, so his putting stroke headed south.
18. James Braid
One of the Great Triumvirate, along with Vardon and Taylor, Braid was the longest driver of the three and found more than his fair share of fairways. Won his five Open Championships in a 10-year stretch and even at age 78 shot a gross 74. Went on to become a notable architect whose courses, not surprisingly, put a premium on good tee shots.
17. Lee Trevino
Like so many other great drivers, his stock-in-trade was a controlled fade that worked with remarkable consistency. But his real genius was that when he needed to draw the ball he could. Very few have ever controlled ball-flight with the unfailing accuracy of SuperMex so it was no surprise that when he joined the US Seniors Tour (as it was then) it became his personal retirement fund.
16. Robert Tyre Jones
Possibly the best there has ever been but the shortness of his career makes a true comparison with modern greats impossible. Thirteen Majors in seven years tells its own story and they were built on a loose, rhythmical, flowing swing that usually sent the ball exactly where it was meant to go.
15. Nick Faldo
Golf’s Greatest Living Englishman calculatedly sacrificed some of the length of his youth in order to develop the metronomic swing that gave him six Majors. The benefits were never more clearly demonstrated than at Muirfield in 1992 when, under pressure from John Cook he nailed it on the 72nd hole to set up his championship winning par.
14. Joyce Wethered
Arguably the greatest woman golfer ever to pull on spikes, she was so impressive that even Bob Jones said he had never been so intimidated by anyone’s play. Henry Cotton added: ‘I do not think a golf ball has ever been hit, except perhaps by Harry Vardon, with such a straight flight by any other person.’ She won five English Amateur and four Amateur Championships and retired far too early.
13. Byron Nelson
Also retired when still in his prime – at age 34 (because of haemophilia and a dislike of the Tour pro’s life) and, unlike most in this list, eschewed a controlled fade or draw in favour of simply hitting it straight. It was something he did so well that in 1945 he won 18 tournaments, 11 of them on the bounce, for the greatest streak of all time.
12. Ernie Els
The affable South African does everything well but it all starts on the teeing ground and in the modern era he has the winning combination of both length and accuracy. He’s such a powerful hitter that he can nudge his Titleist out there over 300 yards without apparent effort, so he invariably retains control.
11. Jim Furyk
US Open winners cannot afford to be wild off the tee and, while not up there with the longest in the game, Furyk’s unorthodox style gives him the repeatability for which most golf pros would sell their grandmothers. Now recovered from wrist surgery he perpetually demonstrates that anyone who can hit fairways and greens will be tough to beat.
10. Ben Hogan
Hogan, like many Texans who grow up trying to hit the ball low under the wind, developed a chronic hook that almost put paid to his career but by bloody-minded determination and unceasing practice he made himself into one of the best drivers ever. So much so that the sixth hole at Carnoustie has been re-named ‘Hogan’s Alley’ in honour of the narrow strip of grass between bunkers and OB that he found all four days in 1953 en route to victory and his only claret jug in the only Open in which he competed.
9. Annika Sorenstam
Her iron play, particularly from 100 yards in, is exquisite, she has a fine putting touch and probably the best brain in women’s golf but long, straight driving is the platform on which the best golfer in the world’s game is based. So relentlessly does she thrash her opponents that an alternative career as a dominatrix beckons when she gives up golf.
8. Harry Vardon
Six Opens, which remains a record, and one US Open are the Majors tally for one of the purest ball-strikers ever to pick up a brassie or spoon. Challenged throughout his career by JH Taylor and James Braid he nevertheless was first among equals, mainly because of his great ability from the tee.
7. Tony Jacklin
Like Hogan, Vardon, Watson and others in this list he continued to be a superlative striker of the ball long after his scoring ability was sabotaged by a dodgy putting stroke. But we shall remember him always for the athleticism and power of his tee shots, summed up by Henry Longhurst with the words ‘What a corker!’ as Jacklin unleashed a superlative drive on the 18th at Royal Lytham and St Annes in 1969 for his only Open win on this side of the Atlantic.
6. Jack Nicklaus
The greatest ever had a swing characterised as ‘rock and block’ that consisted of an upright action that, coupled with his strength, gave him the most telling power fade ever seen. He had the capacity to bludgeon a course but preferred to use brains as well as brawn and quietly pick its pockets. Eighteen Majors and 19 runners-up spots suggest that his driving was, err, really quite good.
5. Calvin Peete
Born black and dirt poor, with 18 siblings, Peete didn’t even play golf until he was 23 and it was an unlikely sport to choose because he broke his left elbow as a boy and it wasn’t set properly, leaving him unable to straighten his arm. Unexpectedly, the injury meant he was phenomenally straight and he topped the US Tour driving accuracy stats for 10 straight years. And as Lee Trevino said: ‘He straightens his arm to take the cheque.’
4. Colin Montgomerie
For seven unbelievable years Monty never had to have his golf shoes cleaned because he didn’t know where the rough was and simply walked down the middle of the newly-mown grass. He famously never practised – because he never needed to. Stroll on the tee, hit driver to right centre, find the green and hole the putt. Piece of piss to a trained athlete.
3. Sir Henry Cotton
It was said of the three-time Open winner (by US coach Bob Toski) that he was so unyieldingly straight from the tee that it was impossible to determine if his ball was in the left or right side of the fairway. Cotton knew how good he was and didn’t shy away from telling others but most of them could see it for themselves whenever he drove the ball.
2. Sam Snead
Quite possibly the most naturally gifted player ever, Snead’s swing was so fluid that it was likened to pouring molasses over treacle and the epithet ‘Slammin’ Sam’ always did him a great disservice because he was a pure swinger, not a hitter. He won 84 US Tour events – a record still to be beaten, over six different decades, five Majors and recorded 34 holes-in-one. He remained good enough to finish third in the US PGA at age 62 and throughout it all his driving was the lynchpin.
1. Greg Norman
His career spanned the change from persimmon to titanium but he was equally good with either. Previously, golfers tended to be either long or straight but none before or since has combined the two to such telling effect. Like a Federer serve or Lillee bouncer, Norman’s tee shot was the ace in his hand that he knew he could rely on when it really counted. Two Opens are scant reward for one so talented but his final 18 holes at Royal St George’s in 1993 when he lifted the claret jug for the second time is possibly the greatest driving round ever seen. When the pressure was really on he showed frailty with his iron approach shots but with a wood in his hands he was peerless.
Huge but haywire Tiger Woods: Only a man with his genius could contend as often he does without ever finding a fairway. John Daly: The enormous backswing means that if his timing is just a fraction out – which it often is – then the ball could go anywhere. Laura Davies: Wallops it like an angry man, and just as unpredictable. Hank Kuehne: Tall, pencil-thin American who, like Gerald Ford, doesn’t know which course he’s playing until after the first tee shot comes to rest.
Back to the practice ground Thomas Bjorn: In this year’s European Open put three balls into the River Liffey on the 71st hole before eventually signing off with an 11, on his way to shooting 86. Seve Ballesteros: Once suggested that all courses should have no fairways, so that everyone else would have to play from the rough, too. Jose Maria Olazabal: Often couldn’t find a fairway with GPS but such are his powers of recovery, and iron play, that it didn’t matter. Ben Crenshaw: Tom Weiskopf said of him: ‘He hits in the woods so often he should get an orange hunting jacket.’ Arnold Palmer: Only knew one way to play and that was to thrash it as hard as possible, with rather inevitable consequences.
Honourable mention Moe Norman; Golf’s greatest eccentric was famous for hitting drivers so straight that a caddie with a baseball glove could stand at the end of the range and catch them – supposedly without moving his feet.
Almost made it into the top-20 Angel Cabrera: Monstrously long Argentinian is still not consistent enough but he is fun to watch. Vijay Singh: Regularly among the longest drivers on Tour and has the strength to recover when he finds the rough – an ability that is tested just a tad too often. Tom Kite: The nearest thing golf has to a cyborg, he defined the importance of fairway, green, hole the putt, but wavered when the pressure was most intense. Fred Funk: Shorter than a Nick Faldo thank-you speech to journalists but always walks in a straight line after his ball. Retief Goosen: Long enough and straight enough but not quite enough of either to be included.
Martin Vousden is a freelance golf writer, a former editor of Today’s Golfer and launch editor of Golf Buyer and Swing magazines. His book: With Friends Like These; A selective history of the Ryder Cup, was published in 2006 by Time Warner. He edits the website Progolftip by Guproadsense.co.nr
