pathetic distance

hi guys ive been knocking about about occasionally for years now during the summer but decided this year as ive always loved playing even though i was rubbish i would buy a golf course season ticket which i did in june. since then ive been playing an average of 4 times a week and have also joined a society. i have seen my average strokes on the course fall from just over 100 to mid 80's (latest jump from low 90's to mid 80's in the last few weeks). i play off 26 in my society at the minute mainly because the first 3 of the 5 meetings ive had were well below what i knew i was capable of.

anyway i feel myself improving and practice quite a lot now just hitting balls and practising different shots and am fairly straight especially with my drives which i practised a lot to overcome a bad slicing habit i had before but my distance is a bit cronic for a 20 stone 36 year old active man. i am averaging roughly 200 yards with my driver off the tee with my best being about 220 (very rare) and its starting to make me wonder if im ever going to be able to hit the ball a decent distance. it is causing me to have to be twice as accurate as a lot of the guys im playing with as they are hitting the ball a fair bit further than me which means when im using 7 iron they are using pitching wedge and when they are using 7 im using about a 4 or 5 iron and worst of all a lot of the courses we are playing now have loads of par 4's over 400 yards long which i cannot even reach with a good drive followed by a good 3 wood lol.

 is there anything i can do to improve this, is it about strength as some of the guys i play with dont appear to be very physically strong. and what is the best way to improve my clubhead speed. im dead serious about this even if it means lots of exercise i just dont know whats right and whats not.

cheers

ps sorry mods i meant to put this in the general golf topics section, dunno why it ended up here feel free to move it, thanks

David,If you can manage to get your swing recorded and posted on here there are quite a few of us that can offer some advise.What you are describing is not uncommon I play golf sometimes with an ex international No8 and he only hits it similar distance as you. We all hate them skinny weedy fellas that hits it 300yrds+ don't worry.

David

I think you should get things into perspective really.  Firstly, if you are capable of regularly hitting mid 80's to low 90's then you aren't a 26 handicap and there obviously isn't too much wrong with the way you get round the course.  Personally I'd love to be that consistent.  Secondly, don't get worked up about distance.  I regularly play with guys who can hit 250-275yds (really hit that distance I mean, not just fisherman's boasting) while I just plonk along with my 200yd drives and if that means 3 shots to the green then so be it, I'm a bogey golfer and utilise that.  Now I stop worrying about how far other people hit it and concentrate on my own game, I deliberately hardly ever use a driver on the longest drive hole because I know I'll try and over hit it and veer off wildly to the right, all I want to do is hit the fairway (and yes, sometimes my second just about gets to the LD marker).  So now I've started to become more relaxed and my timing is improving and the distance and accuracy is starting to get there. It's not about power, it's about timing and remember you first have to beat the course and play to your own ability.   

I took my advice from John P (although why it's taken me 5 years to figure it out I don't know) who thinks his way around courses.  The reasoning is pretty simple, if you can hit a ball 170yds then in 3 shots that puts you at 510yds, there aren't many par 5's that would be out of reach with a pitch from that sort of distance (especially from the yellows) - get it close to the pin and it's a par.

Having said that I would have struggled to reach the fairway on some holes if we'd have played off the blue tees at Wychwood on Saturday!  Some of those were massive.