With instinctive satisfaction -- because men, by nature, relish the feel of power -- Jim Colbert wrapped his hands around an object designed with titanium and carbon, refined by Ivy League minds and intended for perfection.

"Here it is," Colbert said, "my driving machine."

And with that, Colbert gripped his golf club-turned-machine -- a Callaway Big Bertha Fusion FT3 -- and blasted a golf ball-turned-engineering-experiment straight down the fairway, 280 yards long. Colbert was only playing a practice round yesterday at Laurel Valley Golf Club, preparing for the Senior PGA Championship, but that hardly mattered. On the seventh hole, Colbert still hit the ball farther than anybody else in his foursome, and certainly farther than any 64-year-old grandfather of six has the right to.

The Champions Tour players who have descended on Ligonier this week agree almost unanimously that technology has reformed their sport. Only those 50 and older play on the PGA's senior circuit. Their ages would suggest performances in slow decline, but because of technology and the space-age engineering now pioneering the golf industry players are crushing balls farther than ever before.

John Jacobs averaged 246.5 yards off the tee in 1988. Now, at 60, Jacobs' average drive travels 286.0. In 1990, Tom Purtzer led the PGA Tour with an average driving distance of 279.6. Now, as he moves farther away from his athletic prime, he's also moving closer to the pin: Last season, his usual drive flew 294.8 yards.

"Technology, my friend," said Dana Quigley, who turned pro in 1971. "I hit one ball 338 yards last week. I hit one 346 [one month ago] in Austin, Texas. Used to be, I couldn't hit it that far with a driver and a pitch."

Distance is especially important this week, because Laurel Valley, measuring 7,107 yards, favors long hitters. Even so, players are distance-crazy every week.

Technology is now an obsession, madly pursued. Quigley believes golf clubs aren't improving yearly, or even monthly. He thinks they're getting better by the week. That's why he makes sure to switch clubs faster than most players can unwrap them.

"I won the first tournament this year, came in second in the next, and I don't have any of the 14 clubs I used in those tournaments," Quigley said. "There's always something better. Always. I come here every day and, honestly, it's like Christmas. Like, what new thing can I have?"

On the practice range, amateurs experiment with their swings. Champions Tour players experiment with their clubs. At Laurel Valley, several of the most notable golf club manufacturers lined trailers along the right side of the driving range. Inside each trailer, representatives from the various manufacturers were able to assemble and customize clubs almost instantaneously, catering to players' particulars.

If a certain club felt too long, Callaway could fix it. If a certain driver seemed to have too much weight in the rear of the club head, TaylorMade could rebuild a club with weight distributed in the front.

"We can build a club from scratch and have it in a player's hands in, literally, 30 minutes," said Lance Hancock, a pro tour representative for Callaway.

In some cases, the adjustments are so slight, they could only be noticed by a player who swings a club hundreds of times every week. Various specialty golf magazines, advertising new equipment, illustrate shafts that sell for $300 -- without the clubhead.

When players are outfitted for new clubs, top club designers hook the players up to monitors that record data measuring their swings. After computing projections for ball trajectory and launch angle and swing speed, a quick formula then indicates the ideal kind of club.

Even golf balls, the most fundamental element of the sport, are now based on principles understood only in MIT classrooms. Nike, to name one, recently launched a new golf ball (selling $54 for a dozen) with a "progressive density core."

"Guys designing golf balls now, you probably wouldn't even want to have dinner with them," Colbert said. "Because they wouldn't be any fun."

Said Jacobs: "Well, for me, I'm 60 years old, and I hit it as far now as I did when I was 23. That's like cheating."