Why You Need This: Today you get the "Best Driver Distance Drill"!

It seems like there's a common misconception out there with golfers where it's thought that distance has to come at the expense of accuracy.

What if I told you that the research shows that the longer hitters tend to also be the straightest hitters?

In today's video, I'm going to give you a tip that will help you "load up" for more power and will also help stabilize your swing so that you don't lose any accuracy.

I'll also show you a really cool drill that will promote the TSG "Power Turn" and help you get better lower body rotation in your swing.

Getting the proper "feel" for what's supposed to be happening in your golf swing can sometime be all you need to switch on that light bulb in your head.

Let's get started.....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 7:14

Video Transcription:

All right, let’s cut right to the chase. How do we hit the driver with speed and power, and still be accurate?

Piece number one, we need a little bit of a wider stance. A lot of times you’ll hear players talking about, or coaches, whoever, talking about narrowing up that stance that way it’s easier to rotate coming and through.

Now that’s only the case if your feet stay flat on the ground. If my feet are close together, they stay flat on the ground, now it is easier to rotate back and through if I’m here, versus if they stay flat on the ground here.

The problem is in the golf swing our feet don’t stay flat on the ground. As we come through, that right heel comes up, that allows our heels to rotate and you can see I could even take this big, wide stance, this big base and I could really rotate my hips a ton by doing that in the golf swing.

So let’s put this to the test. If a wider swing is better for power, we should be able to make a swing and see the power go up.

First, let’s take a narrow swing here. So I’m going to exaggerate, really exaggerate for this test. I’m going to just going to have a really narrow stance. I’m going to try to hit this ball as hard as I can.

It’s very tough. I feel like I’m really fighting my feet to grab some friction and some power from the ground.

I still generated a pretty decent amount of swing speed. Tough to control. 107 miles an hour, 235 carry, 256 total.

Now let’s go ahead and hit one with a wider stance. Obviously we can see that that’s not going to be very tough beat those numbers given what I usually swing, but let’s really exaggerate it here.

Again, go to the extreme so we can feel this. Now I can really feel like I grab into the ground and rotate my hips.

Again, that right foot has to come off the ground to allow it to happen, but that happens in every great golf swing.

So here let’s try to really swing one hard. There we go, much better. A little thin on the face. We can see there that’s much more swing speed, much more distance.

Even though that wouldn’t normally the way I would swing the golf club, jumped up to 117, and 275 total. Not bad for a mishit there. So that’s piece number one.

Grab a golf club and do this for me. Start out with a very narrow stance, and swing as hard as you can. You’re going to find it incredibly difficult.

Go wider, and wider, and wider until you feel really powerful. Then keep on going until you feel like you’re so wide, now it is a little bit tougher to move through the shot. Then narrow that down again.

Test this out to find your most powerful stance with. It’s easy for somebody to say OK, we need to be shoulder width, but if I make it a little wider than shoulder width, and I pick up 10 or 15 yards, you better believe I’m going to swing like this.

I’m going to find the way that works best for me given my own body type and my own stature. So play around with stance widths and you’ll start to find a sweet spot there where you feel like you get tons of power, and you can really crank that driver.

Now once we have this powerful base, we’re ready to move into the actual drill here which is going to help us to leverage the ground and really get the power from the body.

OK so this drill’s really going to help me to rotate the big segments of my body. My legs, my hips, my shoulders, and generate a lot of power from that. All I’m going to do is take the grip with my left hand only.

I’m going to bring it over here, add my right hand on it, and I’m going to split this grip apart by about shoulder-width or so, a little bit wider or narrower doesn’t really make much difference. The right hand’s going to go on there underhand.

From here, I’m going to work on loading up my body. I’m going to really feel like I’m loading up as far back as I can go.

Again, everybody’s going to be a little bit different based on your flexibility. Feel like you loosen up that left heel a little bit to get those hips to rotate. Really load up into the backswing.

That’s going to help to stretch you out and feel like you’re really getting wound up just like you see with the top pros.

If you’re a little bit tighter, and you can only go to here, that’s completely fine. Just go as far as you can to get the most power that you have given your own individual range of motion.

Now from there, as I work on this downswing, I want to feel like I’m coming down on plane. So I don’t want to come down over the top like this and slice across the ball.

I don’t want to come back way inside like this. Let’s get really wound up and then come down on plane and through impact what I want you to do is feel like a hockey shot.

I don’t play hockey so I apologize for people who do play hockey if I’m describing this wrong, but feel like this is a hockey shot.

I want you to take that right foot and drive through there and feel like you’re going to press through with the right side of your body.

So I’m taking the right side of my body and I’m really getting some power into that swing this way.

So as I come on through, I really feel like I’m driving the right side of my body. My hip, my shoulder, my arms are coming through with some speed and that’s going to allow me to get the speed into this club.

That’s going to make sure that I don’t decelerate and I really keep everything work through the golf shot.

Now the wrong way to do this, and where I see players lose a lot of speed, is they’ll keep their body still. They’ll start down and go all hands and arms and flip because my body’s not moving.

If I can rotate my body on through, now I can keep that momentum moving through the golf ball. So again, easy to say, let’s just put it to the test, find out for our self.

On this one I’m going to feel like I keep my lower body very still, not very engaged. The opposite of what we just did in that drill.

So I’m not really going to load up in the backswing, and I’m not going to turn on through into the downswing. So watch my legs on this swing.

Again, I got a lot of whip from my hands and arms, not going to be very accurate with that one. That one’s not going to be the best shot. Went over into the left rough, barely.

My swing speed was 103.9, 258 total distance. I hit it pretty well considering my low swing speed, but I can do a lot better than that, and you can too.

I’m going to go ahead and do this drill again four or five times, get the feeling there. Really driving through the shot.

Let’s get that same sensation in the drive, and let’s see if we can pick up a little bit of distance. There we go, much better. Right down the left side of the fairway.

Let’s see what my club head speed and my distance went up to. So 103 on the one before, I’m all the way up to 115.4, 291.9 total distance.

So really focus on getting wound up with that split grip, that really helps you to do that. Then from there, use those legs, use that lower body to rotate on through to build your swing speed.

All right, so this is a cool drill. I really love this, this split-hand grip really forces you to load up your body and to be honest with you, that’s the Power Turn.

That’s what the Power Turn is all about in the Top Speed Golf System. So start with this drill. Work on this today, but if we really want to ingrain it, let’s not kid ourselves.

One video is not going to make a swing change for a lifetime. This is getting you started in the right direction. This is the first step.

We need to take the second step and the third step, so that that Power Turn becomes completely automatic and those drives get powerful every single time.

Go to the Top Speed Golf System, click on the Instruction tab at the top of the website. Then go to the Power Turn section.

Work through level 1, level 2, level 3. When you do those drills in culmination with what we did here today, you’re going to be making that big turn every single time.

You’re going to be ripping those drives, and you’re going to thank yourself for it in two, three, four months from now, because it’s going to be completely ingrained at that point if we work on these drills.

Best of luck, I can’t wait to get started with you in the Power Turn.