Why You Need This: In this video, you'll discover the driver distance secrets that the manufacturers don't want to tell you.

So, before you go out and buy the newest $500 driver, realize that the people recommending the club are doing their jobs.

They're making it sound like the only reason you're struggling is because you don't have this new shiny, super expensive driver.

Ask yourself...

Will a $500, $700, or even a $1000 make you a better driver?

Is the latest club that's featured in TV commercials going to have you bombing 310 yard drives?

Just in case you're thinking...

"Well, maybe"...

Pump the brakes because the miracle driver doesn't exist.

In fact, I bought a $100 used driver around 6 years ago...

And I prefer it over any of the new, expensive drivers because it's the right driver for me.

So, here's the first of the driver distance secrets...

You need to realize that all the new drivers by the top brands are equally "hot."

What I mean by this is that all the top drivers have a .83 COR (essentially if you throw a ball 100mph at the sweet spot of the driver, it'll come back at 83 mph).

If the COR exceeds .83, then the driver is illegal.

But, if all the top drivers have the same COR, that doesn't mean you won't find a driver that performs better for you.

There are several different factors that affect which club is best for you...

1. Swing speed
2. Launch angle
3. Club head consistency

Swing speed

In general, the lighter the club, the faster you'll be able to swing.

Also, the longer the club the faster your swing speed.

Of course, it's not all good news; the longer the club, the more inconsistent you'll be.

If you can, try different length drivers and if you can control the longer shaft, then by all means, stick with a longer shaft.

Launch angle

The weight of the shaft can affect your launch angle.

Players with a slower swing speed will benefit from a lighter shaft due to a higher launch angle.

However, players with a faster swing speed can benefit from a tad bit heavier shaft and a lower launch angle.

So make sure you test out different shafts before you throw down tons of cash.

Heck, you can even lose distance by buying a $1000 shaft if it's not right for you swing.

Consistency

Now, newer drivers can have some advantages in consistency.

New materials and placing weight in different areas of the club can improve your consistency by essentially increasing the area of the club that will result in a solid hit (i.e. the driver can be more forgiving).

Conclusion

Before you rush out and buy the latest and greatest driver, go get fit and test a bunch of drivers to see which is best for your swing.

Line up a bunch of drivers (even used ones) and if you don't love the driver after a few swings, move on to the next one.

You may be surprised that, after understanding the driver distance secrets above, the right driver for you isn't the most expensive.

Watch now to get the whole truth!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 10:38

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, and welcome back. In today’s video I’ve got a little bit of a different type of video. It’s not instruction, but you should probably watch this before you go out and buy a new $500 or $600 driver.

I’m going to tell you some of the secrets behind club manufacturers, what they’re not telling you. It could save you a lot of money and actually help you to get a better club for you that’s less expensive.

The reason you haven’t seen this before is because it’s really counter-intuitive to most of the people that are going to be talking to you about golf clubs.

You either have marketing, commercials, things like that, and they tell you a lot about golf clubs, but they’re trying to sell you their golf clubs. It’s always a super-positive spin on whatever they’re doing. It’s not always 100 percent of the truth.

Or, you’re at your local shop talking about golf clubs and they also want to sell you golf clubs. I don’t sell golf clubs, so I’m going to give you the actual truth on exactly what’s happening, no smoke and mirrors.

We’re going to get behind what actually makes a good golf club and why I use a used $100 driver that I’ve had for about six years, and it’s better than any brand-new $1,000 driver on the market for my own personal game. Let’s go and talk about in depth what goes on with club manufacturers and how to get the best driver and pick up some good distance.

All right, so what if I told you that every single driver on the market right now goes the exact same distance? There’s not any drivers that are longer than other ones, and if somebody tells you this driver is 20 or 30 yards longer than the previous year, they’re absolutely lying to you.

Let me explain what I mean by this. It doesn’t mean that you won’t have a driver that you hit 20 or 30 yards longer, it just means that in general they can’t make them any hotter or they’re going to be illegal.

So to pass the test they do something called a core test, or the coefficient of restitution. That’s a big fancy way of saying how hot is the face on the driver. They clamp the driver to something that holds the head here, and they shoot a golf ball at the driver.

Let’s say it’s going at 100 miles an hour toward the driver head. It’s an illegal driver if it bounces off anything higher than 83 miles an hour, or 83 percent of the return rate. So that’s called a .83 COR or coefficient of restitution. If it bounces off at 84 miles an hour, driver’s illegal and you can’t use it.

Well, since all the major manufacturers out there, Taylor Made, Titliest, Ping, Cobra, Calloway, any manufacturer you can think of that makes really good quality clubs, they want to do anything they can and spend millions of dollars getting the most distance every single driver when you hit it dead center in the sweet spot bounces back off at 83 miles an hour.

Any driver out there, they’re all exactly the same hotness in the face. Doesn’t mean that you’re not going to find a driver that actually gives you a little bit more distance, and we’ll go into that here in a second.

But I think it’s very important to realize that, when someone says oh, this is the hottest driver out there. There’s no truth to it, they’re all exactly the same.

So now let’s talk about when you’re actually swinging the club yourself, what is it that’s going to allow you to hit one driver much farther than another driver? If you gave me a driver that didn’t fit me at all, it would probably go 30 to 40 yards shorter than the driver that I use.

It comes down to several different factors. Number one is swing speed, so how fast can I swing the driver, and there’s several different things that go into this. I’m going to talk about that in a second.

The second thing is launch angle. Do I get the proper launch characteristics, so is my ball launching high with the right amount of spin to carry the most distance?

Then number three, how consistent is the club head. When I hit off center, so we talked about .83 in the dead center, if I hit it a little bit off the heel, or toe, or something like that, is it going to still be a pretty hot face? That’s what a lot of the manufacturers are working to do.

First let’s talk about swing speed. Whenever you’re picking out a driver, this is another misconception that people have, is that they need a really expensive shaft, expensive means better.

When I’m picking out a driver, if I want to swing it as fast as I can, I want a really lightweight shaft. Really the lightest weight that I can use and still get the proper ball flight. If I have a 100-gram shaft, that’s adding weight to my golf club. I’m not going to be able to swing that as fast as if I had a 30-gram weight shaft.

I’ll get to the reason that not everybody uses super lightweight shafts here in the second part of this. But in general, the lighter the weight the club, the faster I can swing it, the more speed I’m going to get.

Also the longer the club, the faster I’m going to be able to swing. So if this club – back in the ‘90s, the average driver length was about 43 inches. Now the average is 45, you see a lot of 46-inch drivers, and that’s in kind of the race to get the longest driver out there.

Whereas I make a driver longer and longer, I think up to 50 inches or so is legal to use, then I’m going to be able to swing it faster. If you can imagine a helicopter propeller, the inside of that propeller is spinning fairly fast, but the tip of the propeller is spinning much, much faster.

Same thing happens with the golf club. The longer the club, the faster I can swing the club because it has a longer arm or a longer radius. So that helps you to get more speed.

The disadvantages of this, when I use a longer club, I get less consistency. You can imagine using a club that’s 10 feet long, well I’m not going to be able to make solid contact with the ball. That’s happening a small degree whenever you’re hitting a driver that’s two or three inches longer.

It’s not always going to get you more consistent distance, if you use the longer club. But I recommend try one out, try a little bit of longer driver out and see if it gives you some more distance, and if you can control it, if it’s going to work for you.

A lighter club is going to help you, a lighter shaft specifically is going to help you to swing the club faster, but it’s going to possibly hurt your spin rates, which brings us to the second section which was launch angle and spin rate.

I want to, if I’m a slow swing speed player, I want to launch the ball somewhere around 16°, in that ball park, as the ball’s coming off the face of the club. I want to have around high 2,000s of spin. That’s going to get the ball up in the air and it’s going to help it to have enough backspin to stay up in the air and to carry.

If I’m a high swing speed player, let’s say I’m swinging 120 miles an hour, I’m going to launch it a little bit lower and have less spin, because now I have more speed launching the ball off the face, and that’s going to get me the maximum carry.

So I’m probably talking around 12-14° launch, a little bit lower than the slow swing speed players, and a little bit lower spin, somewhere around 2,200 RPMs would be ideal for maximum distance if you’re talking about just hitting the ball as far as you can for a long hitter.

With those lighter shafts, a low swing speed player that’s probably going to work out pretty well because the lighter shaft is going to give you a little bit more spin, because a lighter shaft tends to be a little softer, it will kick up a little bit more. That’s going to get you that good launch.

For a high swing speed player you may need a little bit of a heavier shaft, that way you can keep the spin down and the launch down.

That’s one thing that manufacturers with trick you with a lot. They don’t necessarily tell you, but that’s kind of inferred that a $500 shaft is going to be better for your game than a $50 shaft, and that’s not always the case.

You may be surprised to find out that manufacturers, when they make a shaft, your stock shaft if you went out and bought a replacement is about $100. They’re actually spending $3 to $5 on that golf shaft, so it’s actually heavily, heavily marked up.

Your $300 to $500 golf shaft that you’re buying, is somewhere in the ballpark of $20 to $60, is what they’re paying for it. A lot of it is marked up, they want to promote those high-end shafts so that they can make a little bit extra money.

You can’t blame them for that, but before you go out and buy the random $500 shaft, realize what is my spin rate, and what is my launch doing? Get fit for your driver to see do I need more spin? Is this $500 shaft that’s going to give me less spin right for me?

It may not be, you could buy a $1,000 shaft, there are some out there, and actually lose distance when you’re doing this because your launch angle and spin may not be correct.

So me personally, I use a Ping i15 driver, I’ve had this one for five or six years. I have a 69 Red series Proforce, I think it’s an Axivcore driver shaft. It fits my game perfectly, it gives me perfect launch, perfect spin. If I hit it solid it’s got the highest COR, it’s going to give me the most distance.

I haven’t found another driver that works better for me. I probably won’t, even though I’ve been using this driver, this is probably my second one I’ve had, because the faces tend to crack after a while,

But I’ve been using it for about five years or six years, whenever it first came out. That’s why I don’t rush out to the store to buy a new one every year. You may find that some of the new drivers work really well for you, and one advantage with the newer drivers, the last thing is to have consistency.

The weighting in the head, they’re using a lot of new materials to take weight out of different parts of the head and put it in different parts, in other parts, to give you more consistency. So if you hit a little off the toe or the heel, you get closer to the .83 that you have on the sweet spot.

That’s the one thing that new drivers, newer technology can help you with, is they’re redistributing the weight in new ways, they’re using different polymers, and new materials that they didn’t have 10, 15 years ago.

Especially with the larger head size, making a lot more consistent so that you can get more distance.

So if you’re looking to pick up some distance before you rush out there and buy the latest, greatest technology, go get fit. Figure out what your launch and spin is, and then try out some different drivers, some used drivers even, to see which one works for you.

I’m going to end with one last tip here to save you a lot of money. A good friend of mine, Chris Bussell, I used to work with, had really the best way to test out clubs. He said go ahead and grab all the clubs the place has for you to try out.

Try out 6, 7, 8 drivers. Make one or two swings with each one of them, and if you don’t love it on the first couple swings, it’s probably telling you that that club doesn’t fit your specs and that you don’t want to try to force yourself into being able to play that club.

You may get the $600 driver, make one swing, two swings, not really feel that good with it. Go ahead and set it to the side, try out some other ones. Every single club that I’ve had that I’ve loved, within the first swing I knew that it was going to fit me.

Every expensive driver that I went out there and I bought, and I hated, and I never really got it to work like I wanted to, I thought it was a cool driver and I bought it and tried to fit my game to it.

Make a couple swings, find a driver you love. Don’t have to spend tons of money, and go out there and bomb the drives.

I’ll see you guys soon.