From the Golf Digest labs : Hitting the sweet spot - Brief Article

Want to bust your tee shots? Swing hard. Want to really bust your tee shots? Swing hard, but make sure you hit the ball on your driver's sweet spot. To quantify the importance of solid contact, we asked Dr. P.C. Chou at the Drexel University Ballistics Research Center to run computer simulations of various impacts using a typical 10-degree oversize driver and a two-piece ball. His tests reveal that you lose about six yards for every two-tenths of an inch you stray off-center in any direction and with virtually any swing speed. We then marked a driver's true sweet spot on impact tape (black circle, below) and had an 18-handicapper hit five balls. The results are shown with the red circles. Our tester sacrificed yardage on each hit by never getting closer than sweet-spot fringe. The moral of the story? If you're interested in increasing your average driving distance, focus on improving your mis-hits.

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