Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "Don't Make These 3 Driver Mistakes | Distance Killers"

In today's lesson...

…we’ll discuss 3 common driver mistakes that rob you of easy distance, and you’ll discover the true secret to having power!

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 8:31

Video Transcription:

All right. Pretty nice drive there. 301. Not even loosened up there a little bit. Not my best club speed, but a perfect smash. I mean, I hit it really nice and solid, and it's very easy to do. So this is my brand new just testing out this ping g 425. Pretty excited to hit some of the first shots with this.

Let's talk about how are you going to get some power? How are you going to make the driver swing easy? You know, if you want to hit it far, that's great. But how do we do it in an easy way? Well, one of the mistakes that I see is players have been told and I used to feel the same thing myself, is to keep that right elbow kind of tucked in and down in the back swing.

And what happens is when I took that elbow in and the back swing, it ends up kind of cutting off my shoulder turn. So I almost used to feel like when I hit it much shorter and much more inconsistent than I do now, I'd feel like I didn't really move that elbow much in the back swing has kind of folded it up and then I just let it go.

Felt really consistent. It felt like it was a very simple move, but I just didn't have the power. And it really wasn't any more consistent, actually less consistent than my swing now. So I felt like I'm just going to been that right arm early. Keep the elbow tucked in and the back swing. The reason I did this, because I always heard what you want to have that elbow tucked in the down swing.

So I figured, well, it's easier to tuck it in the back swing and just keep it there than it is to do it the other way. But that just kind of sucks away all your power. What you want to feel like as you want to feel like almost like you're reaching up and there's almost a hammer up here and I'm gonna go ahead and grab that.

Handle the hammer way above my head. I can let my elbow fly out away from my body like Jack Nicklaus and hundreds of other players that have played on the PGA Tour that are fantastic ball strikers. Now I've got all this space and all this width, and from there, then I'm going to rotate through. And it's actually that that opening up in that rotating that drives the elbow in and keeps it tucked at your side in the downswing.

So we don't want to feel like we tuck it and rotate like this in the back swing and don't really make a turn I want to get loaded up, get that hammer up here and then rotate in the downswing. That's what's going to tuck it in there. That's going to be the best of both worlds. Now, a lot of players will tell me, Clay I'd love to have that nice high back swing, but I'm just not flexible enough.

Well, what it is, is we're not flexible enough if our shoulders don't rotate and our arms rotate flat. So if I feel like, again, I'm turning flat around my body, this is already very tight for me and my shoulders haven't rotated much. That would be an incredibly short back swing. And I feel really tight in my chest. Like it's almost like even cramping up here in my left pick because it's so tight.

Well, that's because I've rotated the wrong way. Now, notice what I'm going to do is I'm going to feel like that elbow comes off my chest and instead of my hands going back this way, my hands are going up at the same time. It's going to move my hips, let my hips turn, and all of a sudden I've got a lot more power.

I've gotten a lot higher. My back swing and it actually feels looser through my chest. I can actually hold this position here for quite a while without wearing out. That's what gives you a lot of good power. So let's grab something off this top shelf up here, like a hammer. And then from there I'm going to rotate my body.

That's when the elbow is going to tuck in. You're going to be hitting it really hard when you do that. So watch this one here. I'm going to go ahead and do one the wrong way, which is fold the arm. And then on the next one, I want to do it the right way. So here's the wrong way.

Arm fold no shoulder turn. I hit that on absolutely as solid as I could. Felt like a million bucks. But again, it's not very consistent, even though it felt like I was doing less. That was a weak slice carried at 190 swing speed went all the way down. You know what, 20 miles an hour slower on that swing. So not only was it it follows you, it feels more consistent, but in reality is not more consistent.

And it's a whole heck of a lot weaker. Now, going to do that kind of arms up, shoulders rotated, swing, like I'm grabbing something off the top shelf and then rotating through. Let's see how that one works. A lot more power and again, a lot more club head speed. Nice. A little tight draw there. Straighter path or straighter ball shape than the one before.

24 miles an hour. More club head speed. 311 yards, almost 100 yard over a hundred yards farther carry. So it's just being an athlete. If I don't rotate my body that way, I can't be athletic. Now, another misconception with this, the second piece of this is feeling like I've lost my tea here. If you grab my tea real quick, so much power, I'm blowing the tees off the hitting area.

But here when we're making our downswing, we actually want to get that right shoulder coming through the shot. So when I load it up, I get everything turn in behind me. As I go through I'm rotating everything through. When I did that kind of lever action, it's like nothing moved my shoulders, that move and all. Everything is folded up and unfolded again.

Seems simple. It just really doesn't work. Instead of that fold unfold where my shoulder doesn't move, I want to turn my shoulder back. Grab something off the shelf. Turn my shoulder through the shot. And the key here is to feel like your right shoulders facing the target when you come on through. Let's give that a whirl. Someone do the exact same thing, grab something off the shelf, rotate through it.

Actually thought I hit a little ball there, misread the club through. When I come through, I'm going to point my right shoulder as far as I can to the target. All right, let's try one out here.

There we go. Not going to hit one a lot better than that. Nice little draw again. You look at those three shots. They're almost overlaying each other, three separate shots. They had the good swing. Again, high kilobits, speed. 307 yards. Very consistent. Smash factor. Everything was really nice and solid. So it's about getting rid of that little lever action with the arm and letting your body rotate.

That's the true secret to having power Now, I'm going to be honest with you. A lot of players, when they hear grab this off the shelf, the first thing they think is like, I'm just not that flexible. You look pretty flexible. I'm actually not. I'm stiff as a board. It doesn't look like I'm that inflexible. But what happens there is if you want to grab this thing off the shelf, there's a way that you can move your knees your hips and your shoulders that make that completely easy.

I can teach somebody this 90 years old to rotate their body and get wound up like this. And then from there, they can feel like they just turn on through to the target. And all of a sudden their swing speed goes up five miles an hour, ten miles an hour, 15 miles an hour. I've seen it happen time and time again.

Players started at 20 and 30 yards farther in 5 minutes. But you can't really do that unless you move your knees, your hips and your shoulders the correct way. And that's exactly what we teach in the power turn on the tops of your system. I want to teach you the right way to rotate your body in the back swing and then to rotate your body in the three swing so that you can get that easy power.

Let me walk you through that step by step. Now, after you do the drills in this video, head over to the instruction tab on the top of your golf website, top speed golf system, and then the power turn And from there, I want you to just do one video for the power turn. You pair that up with what you've done here today and you're on your you're on your way to ingraining this forever.

See after you start doing these first couple videos, you're going to hit it farther. I guarantee you you're going to hit farther, but you're finally going to forget what you even worked on a week or two weeks from now. But if I commit to a system in the power turn there we do level one, it starts to become a little bit more ingrained then as a chip away at level two and level three, it becomes absolutely automatic.

So I don't even you don't even have to remember what you did if you go through the power turn system, because once you go through that system, it's going to have it ingrained to where that's just your swing. Nobody has to tell you to swing longer. Nobody you don't have to think about your shoulders anymore. You don't have to think about grabbing the hammer off the shelf.

You just swing and it automatically happens. You'll be like Dustin Johnson, you want to smoke one right down the middle. You won't even know what happened, right? That's the feeling that I want you to get. So head on over to the power turn after this. Just do one video. Commit to one video. You're going to see that positive momentum.

Then in a fairly short period of time, in the grand scheme of things, work through level one, two and three, and it's going to be ingrained for a lifetime. So best of luck. I can't wait to see you in the power turn. Let's go and get started with just one video today.