Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover the "Best Driver Swing for Senior Golfers"

What if I told you that something as simple as the way you set up to hit the golf ball, could be costing you 20 or more yards in distance?

You see, there's a proper way that your body is supposed to work in the golf swing...

...and if you're a bit inflexible, or are starting to get up there in years...

...your range of motion may be a bit limited.

It can cause you to feel tight at certain points in your swing and you're losing distance with each and every shot.

Today you're going to discover 3 setup changes to help you feel free and loose when you swing...

...and you're going to see much better distance with what will feel like the same amount of effort.

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 14:14

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: What if I told you something as simple as the way you set your feet up at address when you’re hitting your driver could be costing 20 or 30 yards off the tee?

Well, I’m going to walk through exactly how your body should properly work in the golf swing, some things that could really be limiting your range of motion, making you feel tight, making you hit it shorter.

And the correct ways to set up properly that way you’re free, you’re loose, and you pick up some serious distance. Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so I’ve got Q here, he’s going to be manning the FlightScope. I’m going to hit a couple shots with some various foot positions, and let’s see how that can affect the distance.

So first of all what I’m going to do here, is I’m going to set up and talk about what’s going on in the swing. Let’s talk about the backswing first.

As I swing to the top what’s happening is my hips are rotating, and let’s imagine my feet are perfectly square to the camera.

As my hips rotate, essentially what’s happening is my feet are turning in. So if I didn’t have my hips rotate, this is what my feet are doing in the backswing.

So my hips are staying here, my feet are doing that in the backswing, in my downswing, my feet are doing this. Actually, I would be like that at the finish of my swing.

Kind of looks goofy when you don’t rotate your hips, but that’s exactly what’s going on.

Now the problem is most players that I see, especially if you get a little bit up in age, have a really tough time from this socket internally and externally rotating their feet. That can throw the brakes on your swing speed.

Let’s start with the backswing. If I’m just looking at my left foot first, in the backswing, it’s pretty easy to rotate and make a good turn if my left heel comes slightly off the ground.

So that’s going to, if I keep my heel on the ground, I try to rotate, my hips can only go to here. If I let them slightly lift a bit, and we’re not talking a ton, maybe an inch, half-inch, whatever, just loosen that up, that’s going to allow my hips to rotate more.

In the backswing, if you’ve been taught this idea or have this idea that you want to keep your feet firmly planted to the ground, I think that’s really going to limit your range of motion. It’s really going to hurt your distance.

So when you’re swinging back, particularly with the left foot, let it loosen up a little bit. Let your left knee loosen up a little bit. I don’t have to keep it locked, and rigid, and straight ahead.

I can let that kick in a little bit. That allows my hips to rotate more, that allows my body to rotate more. But let’s put it to the test.

Let me hit one now keeping my left foot down with the idea that I’m going to keep my feet pretty rigid.

So I’m going to keep my feet straight, not a lot of movement, and I’m going to go ahead and give one a good rip.

There we go, pretty solid. Dead straight. Not a bad looking shot. What are the numbers on that one, Q?

Quentin Patterson: Got 112 club head speed, and 267 carry.

Clay: So not too bad, 112 and 267. That doesn’t mean that if you’re swinging 80 miles an hour this isn’t going to help. That doesn’t mean…it’s straight applicable.

When I loosen up the hip, or loosen up the left foot, I bet I’m going to see a distance gain, a swing speed gain. The same thing would be happening if we’re swinging 80 miles an hour, or if we’re swinging 150 miles an hour.

It doesn’t matter what you’re swinging, it just matters what your body’s doing to get the most out of that. Let’s go ahead and try one now where I do what I just talked about.

I loosen up that left heel a little bit, it allows my hips to turn more, it’s going to allow my shoulders to turn more, and let’s see what that does to my swing speed.

There we go. Almost an exact straight line, another nice straight one there. I think I swung a little faster on that one. What’s the FlightScope say?

Quentin: Yeah, 119.5 club head speed, carry distance was 297.3.

Clay: OK, so picked up about 30 yards more distance by loosening that left heel. The reason there is, it allows my body to move freely. It allows me to load up more so that I can generate speed in a more efficient way.

Think of it like a Fred Couples, or a Davis Love III, those aren’t tight, rigid, short, compact swings. Those are nice and free-flowing, that’s how Fred Couples still booms it out there even though he’s in his 60s now, that’s exactly how he’s doing that.

Now let’s take a look at the other foot, the right foot. Or actually let’s focus in on the left foot on the finish now.

We talked about how to loosen up a little in the backswing, what about in the follow through?

Well, when I come to my follow through, if my hips are rotating this way, my foot is staying straight forward, it’s tough to rotate my hips much past this.

If you’re a little bit up in age, maybe you’re a little tighter, it’s probably going to be tough to get here. Maybe you’d be lucky to rotate your hips this much without that front foot kind of blocking ‘em.

That’s because what’s happening in the follow through is essentially my front foot is doing that. I know it looks crazy again, but that’s internal rotation coming from the hip socket.

A great way to test that is to go ahead and hold your foot up in the air, rotate your foot inward, and see how far you can go without moving your hips.

Rotate your foot outward and see how far you can go. That’s how much you can rotate your hips with keeping your feet flat.

If you find that you’re limited at all when you turn it in, then you really need to flair this foot out. So if I start now instead of my foot being straight forward, and I can only go to here, what happens if I rotate my foot say 20° or 30° open?

Now, I can go all the way to here before it’s neutral, and then I can really rotate much more in the follow through.

So that’s a quick, easy cheat to be able to get some more swing speed if you’re a little tight or if you’d like to be a little freer in your swing.

I’d start with a normal setup, feet forward, rotate that foot a good 20°, 30°, even 45° if you’re super tight. If you’re super tight, I’d love to see the front foot like this.

If you put the front foot like that and you keep it there, the distance is going to go down the tubes, it’s not going to be good. So let me go ahead and try to do another one.

I’ll even exaggerate here with that left foot open, and I’ll see what happens. There we go, another good swing. I really felt like in my follow through, definitely a lot more freed up with that front foot rotated out.

What was the numbers on that one, Q?

Quentin: 119.8 club head speed, and carry distance was 287.9.

Clay: OK, so I’m carrying 20-30 yards farther by being able to rotate through, picking up about 7 miles an hour more distance.

Now the last one here, let’s talk about the right foot, particularly in the backswing. We’ll go over the downswing too, but most importantly the backswing.

If my right foot is straight forward again like this, as I rotate in the backswing, I can only turn my hips a very small amount if I’m not very flexible.

Again, do the test. Hold your foot up, try to internally rotate it, I don’t want to rotate my hips like this. Keep my hips straight, and try to rotate that left foot.

If I can only go to, say, here, you’ve got to flair that foot out. By having that right foot a little more opened up, or this way at address, that allows you to rotate more and get more swing speed, and feel free, and easy, and like your swing is smooth while you’re doing that.

So do the test. I recommend playing that back foot kind of flared out a little bit here in the address position.

Finally, where you’re following through, same as the left foot. I’ve got to get this foot to swivel around. If I keep this foot on the ground as I come into my follow through, that’s like taking a break on your entire body and just locking it down.

It’s like having an anchor attached to this leg. You’re going to be slow, slow, slow. I want to go ahead and get that foot to rotate all the way through, all my spikes up in the air so now my hips, and my shoulders, and my body can come on through that.

If you do that, again, you’re going to free up your swing and you’re going to have more distance than you thought was possible. Let’s go ahead and give it a whirl.

All right, that was a good one there, kind of down the left edge of the fairway. Same thing, I’m guessing probably the swing speed is around 119 and kind of similar numbers.

Quentin: Yep, right on the dial, 119 mile per hour club head speed on that one. Carry distance went up to 296.9.

Clay: OK, so not to bad, happy with those. Now I talked a lot about the setup position. What about the rest of the swing, Q? What do you see that can really help people add an extra 5 or 10 miles an hour?

Quentin: Everything Clay talked about there was all to get you to increase your range of motion, to create more space and time to accelerate the club. That’s all done in the lower body.

Now what we want to do is see what we can do with our upper body to be able to achieve the same kind of thing. So what we can do is actually elevate our arms more.

If we go over here, I want you to get in kind of a flat top of the backswing position, where your arms would be really flat, kind of in the same angle as your shoulders here.

You see like Matt Kuchar to be kind of in this kind of position here. You’ll notice how his elbow here is kind of inched in towards his side a little bit?

We’ve probably all heard we want to be connected in the swing, but we actually don’t want to be connected at the top of the swing, because what happens is it can restrict how much time and space we have to accelerate the club.

See how low the arms are here, it’s hard to create much acceleration of the club to do that. What we can do is elevate the arms, see how his trail arm here is now disconnecting from his body.

His elbow might even fly a little bit which is completely fine.

Clay: Yeah, like Jack Nicklaus, somebody like that has a flying elbow.

Quentin: Exactly. Bubba Watson, he’s up here, way up here like Bubba Watson. There’s a reason why Bubba Watson’s one of the top guys on the Tour in driving distance every single year because he gets his hands really, really up high here.

So what you want to feel like if you go back to address here, that you want to feel like you’re lifting the arms up.

You’re not just rotating as you’re going back, but you’re also lifting at your shoulders here, just like that, exactly. So if you have that same kind of feeling that you’re lifting, think Ferris wheel.

Lifting and rotating instead of a merry-go-round where you’re just kind of turning around, if you have that right kind of feeling and let the arm disconnect from the body.

Let the elbow fly a little bit, that’s going to allow you to get the hands really nice and high and allow you to get a lot of speed at impact.

So Clay, how about you do one where you do a nice flat one where you get that good rotation, but get a flat swing and see what kind of numbers we get there.

Then do one where you get that same good rotation but you get the hands nice and high so we can get more space and time.

Clay: OK. I think a lot of people get confused on this too, by thinking that we would say, hey, Matt Kuchar can’t hit it very far. Well Matt Kuchar hits it pretty far.

If you’re big, and strong, and fast, and a good athlete, you’re going to be able to still hit it far no matter what your hand height is in the backswing, but Matt Kuchar could hit it a lot farther.

He does a lot of things basically ideal, perfect, he has a really good swing. He could have another 10 miles an hour possibly if he got those hands a little bit higher.

So let’s go ahead and try it out here, and let’s do the one, the first, the flatter type swing with it more around the body.

Oh, I hit that one nice and solid, right down the middle of the fairway, kind of right side of the fairway, not going to be able to do a ton better than that on kind of the low-hand swing. What was my numbers on that one, Q?

Quentin: So 107.6 club head speed, 293 total distance and that’s with a 1.5 smash, so you really can’t hit it much better than that, it’s about as good as you can do.

Clay: If you’re big, and tall, and strong, and you’re already hitting it 300 yards, and you’re using the flat swing, hey, that’s fine. You could hit it farther, but maybe distance isn’t really a key for you.

If you’re swinging 90 miles an hour and struggling with distance, maybe that would be better to try out kind of a higher hands-type swing like we’re talking about here.

So in this one I’m going to feel like my hands almost like there’s a ceiling above me, and I’m just going to punch my hands straight up through the ceiling.

If you watch this on video, you’re going to see that’s not really what it’s looking like, my hands aren’t that high. It looks like a really nice, normal swing, but that’s the sensation or the feeling that you want to have when you’re trying this out.

Oh, that may have been the best one of the day. Definitely felt faster there and the ball is just carrying a lot longer on that particular swing.

So freed everything up, what was the difference in the numbers there?

Quentin: So 122 club head speed, total distance was almost 320.

Clay: OK, so you can definitely see I started out with my shorter, more restricted swing, 107. Got all the way up to 122, so it’s 15 miles an hour of swing speed that I gained by freeing up my swing.

I don’t know how many yards it was, probably almost 30, 40, 50 yards, something like that. A lot more distance. Now it doesn’t mean that you have to be swinging over 100 miles an hour for this to take place.

I’ve seen hundreds of golfers that are swinging 80 miles an hour, 90 miles an hour, those same principles will add 15, 16 miles an hour of swing speed to your swing and 30 or 40 yards.

If you’re swinging 80 miles an hour, maybe get up to 96, if you’re swinging 90, maybe you get up to 106. So these same principles are universal. They’re going to help you to swing faster, make golf a lot easier.

All right, so what do we do from here? Now if you’re a member of the Top Speed Golf System, click on the instruction tab, click on the TSG System, and the go to the Power Turn.

That’s really an essential key in what we’re talking about in today’s video. Loading the body, loading the arms, all that is getting a bigger Power Turn and not only the backswing, but also the follow through.

That’s really one of the big keys to speed and one of the most important things I think any golfer can do, that’s why it’s one of my five fundamentals of the Top Speed Golf System.

But if you just do this one video, it’s not going to be completely ingrained. You’re going to have a couple good days, you’re going to be bombing some drives, and then a week later it kind of tapers off.

Maybe you don’t have as much swing speed as you did just a few days ago. We really want to ingrain this for a lifetime so that no matter what you do, you show up to the golf course and you’re one of the longest hitters in your foursome.

To do that, we have to work through the system. Go to the Power Turn on level one, work through those drills, and as you start to get more comfortable making this bigger turn, your swing speed’s going to go up.

Then as you go to level two and level three, it’s going to become completely natural so you don’t even have to think about it.

You’re going to swing what feels like an easy swing, and it’s going to be free-flowing and really powerful. So best of luck, I’ll see you in the Power Turn. I can’t wait to get started ingraining this for a lifetime.