The flight of the golf ball is interesting since there are basically two parts to it dependent upon the air flow around the ball: laminar flow and turbulent flow. The laminar flow is achieved by pros or very good amateurs simply by way of speed when they first hit the ball. Then, somewhere during flight, it backs off to turbulant flow where the draws and fades come into play. Turbulant flow is achieved by everyone else. Most notably was when I watched Nicholas discussing putting a slight fade on the ball at about the 300 yd mark with his caddy at a tournament long ago. Sure enough, the ball went straight out, then faded. Proof of how the pros can control this laminar/turbulant thing. As a side note, the British Army long ago did a series of experiments with muskets to determine the distance at which maximum penetration for a musket ball can occur. It was assumed that the closer the target, the greater the penetration. Well, it turned out that somewhere around the 30 yard range was max penetration. No one could explain it back then and I'm not sure if it could be explained now. But it's something like that which determined the optimum distance for firing line-to-line in an effort to get 2-for-1 shots. - Doug McKean ------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from si-list: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: //www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list For help: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field List archives are viewable at: //www.freelists.org/archives/si-list or at our remote archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/si-list/messages Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu