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Interesting to watch Kyle Berkshire play golf on his YouTube channel. He has Trackman set up for almost every shot, even approach shots. Watching enough rounds of his it's easier to understand where the roadblocks are for him to shooting lower scores
It's difficult to determine how effective he is @ driving the ball, but my guess is that he's actually a very effective driver of the ball. If he keeps it in play and can manage to hit a few fairways he's likely to be very effective off the tee because his length is so ridiculous
But what's really interesting is that for the irons he hits, he doesn't spin the ball out of the norm. For example, Tour average w/8-iron is about 7,600 rpm's and Kyle normally keeps it near that spin rate when he hits his 8-iron
But the issue is that at the distance for the approach shot it is so much more spin for that distance. Kyle is hitting his 8-iron easily 210+ yards at 7,600 rpm. Tour avg for 210+ yd shots is more like 4,500 rpm.
Going on FlightScope's Traj. Optimizer shows where the issues are with that much speed with the irons. When you're generating that much more spin due to your greater speed, the deviation in carry distance is far greater. Also you have to contend with backspinning shots
For instance, if he hits an 8-iron at 154 mph ball speed w/7,600 rpm the ball carries 216 yds. Same conditions but 6,600 rpm and the ball carries 224 yards. That's a 24-foot variance.
Avg. Tour player hits 8-iron with 115 mph ball speed at 7,600 rpm vs. 6,600 rpm and that results in ~1 yard variance.
Even if we were to try compare launch conditions for the avg. Tour player to hit the ball as long as KB hits his 8-iron...that's about 142 ball speed, 4,600 rpm and 10.5* launch
Let's say the spin rate for the avg. Tour player dips to ~3,600 rpm...the variance is only about 3 yards of carry (compared to KB's projected 7 yard carry variance w/a drop of 1,000 rpm of spin)
And I haven't factored in other differences like small changes in launch, launch direction, axis tilt, etc.
