Why You Need This: In today's video I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about driver myths.

I'm going to dive into what you need to pay attention to and what you need to ignore when shopping for a new driver.

Do you know what the "engine" of the driver is?

Are there certain drivers that are "hotter" than others?

What is adding length, or shortening your driver really doing to the club?

Find out the answers to these questions and more now!

Let's get started.....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 10:56

Video Transcription:

All right guys, five driver myths to help you pick the best driver. Now I have a little bit of a unique situation.

Almost everybody talking to you about drivers is either trying to sell you a driver or is getting sponsored by a company that’s paying them to promote drivers or anything like that.

I don’t do any of that stuff, so I can tell you the honest truth and what to look for and what to look out for when buying a driver.

So number one, price. This is the thing that we all take for granted. Something is more expensive, it must be better.

But that’s not the case, there’s different needs for different types of players. Let’s say we took a player with a low, low swing speed, let’s say 80 miles an hour, 70 miles an hour, something like that.

Let’s take the other end of the spectrum which would be super high swing speed for 120 miles an hour.

The needs of those players drivers would be very, very different. One play is going to need a softer shaft that’s lighter weight, that way they can swing it a little bit faster, help get the ball up in the air. Help get a little more backspin on the golf ball to keep the ball in the air.

The other player may need a completely different driver to take spin off the golf ball because they’re swinging much faster.

If they buy, if the player with lower swing speed buys a really expensive driver that’s meant for the higher swing speed player, even if they spend $1,000, $1,500 on a driver, it’s not going to work out, they’re actually going to hit it shorter.

Then vice versa, the player with a really high swing speed, there’s some drivers that are $2-, $3-, $4,000, but if it’s made for that lower swing speed player, it’s not going to work for him.

It’s really good to get fit for your driver, and I’ll get to a real big cheat, an easy way to make sure that you never buy a driver that’s not perfect for you, but that’s number one.

I have an $80 driver here. This is my Ping I15 driver, I’ve had this one for six, seven years, something like that. This is my third iteration of this one.

When I originally bought it, I wasn’t trying to save money, I paid $450 when it was brand new with a custom shaft in there.

But ever since then, I’ve always bought used ones off eBay when my face would crack and I’d have to replace the driver.

I’ve tried $400-$500 drivers, I’ve tried several different expensive drivers, nothing for me personally can outperform this driver.

That doesn’t mean that this club is good for you. Ost likely, it’s probably not good for you, because most players aren’t swinging 115 or 120 miles an hour.

There’s a driver that may better fit you that you think is the greatest thing ever, that may not fit me very well. In short, expensive does not mean better for you.

Now another one is, there’s kind of a myth out there and half of this is true, half of it isn’t true. There’s hot drivers.

We always hear about the latest, greatest marketing come out. There’s a brand-new driver that’s just been released, and it’s going to be the hottest thing, it’s going to get 20 more yards.

That’s actually illegal. There’s no way that you can buy a driver that’s much longer than the one that you have.

Now you can get better fit for them, like we said, take spin off, add spin, change the loft, different stuff like that to find the perfect one for you that really does well. But there’s a thing called the coefficient of restitution.

Meaning if I hit this ball dead center of the club face, it’s only allowed to leave that club face -- we’ve got some deer coming out of the words over here -- it’s only allowed to leave that club face at a certain  speed.

If they make a new driver that’s a new hot driver, that’s got a hot face or something like that. It would actually be illegal and it wouldn’t pass the test.

Now there are some differences in each driver head. When they manufacture a head, not every single head gets tested. They just test a few out of the lot.

Some drivers may be a little bit hotter face than another driver. If you go and get a fitting, and you take your driver with you. This is the real trick to bypass buying any bad clubs that are a waste of money.

Take your current driver with you. Hit some golf balls with your driver, then hit this other driver. Hit your driver, hit the other driver. If your driver outperforms the new one, don’t buy it.

No reason wasting your money on something that’s not going to perform as well. If this new driver outperforms your driver consistently, it’s probably a good idea to buy it.

Always make sure you bring your current golf club. Sometimes the machines will be souped up 20-30 miles an hour, or 20-30 yards farther than you normally hit.

They do things like adjust the wind, the adjust the firmness in the fairways that these launch monitors, some different tricks that you can do to try to sell you the driver.

You bring your driver in and compare it side by side, you’re going to know what’s right. Back to what’s hot or not, there’s faces that are thinner on certain drivers, just through the manufacturing process.

They sand a little bit more off of it by accident, the face just comes out slightly thinner, and it’s going to be a little bit hotter when it comes to that. It may also have a little bit more or less loft.

So if you find a driver that’s really good that you’re killing, make sure you get that one. Offer to pay for that particular driver rather than buying a new one off the shelf, because it may be a little bit different than the one that you’re going to get.

That’s another little check there when you’re buying a driver for you. Another myth here is that the shaft of the club is the engine.

If I get this great golf shaft, and there’s some crazy expensive golf shafts, golf shafts go over $1,000 now for super high-end ones. Again, price doesn’t mean that’s going to be better for you.

You can buy a thousand-dollar golf shaft that’s terrible, that you hit worse than your $80 bucket club that you bought off a sale rack somewhere. The shaft isn’t the engine.

If you think about that, let’s imagine a player like Dustin Johnson. Big buy, super strong, kills the ball. What if I gave him a lady’s flex 13° driver that was like the worst fit club for him possible. Guess what?

He's going to hit that thing 280-290 anyways. He could have the perfect fit driver and it’s going to go 310 average, and if he hits the worst fit driver in the world it’s going to go 280 average.

The shaft isn’t really the engine, you’re the engine. You’re the athlete, you’re the player. If you have the great technique and the ability to hit good drives, you can basically take essentially any driver you want.

The shaft is actually the least important part of the club head. When we adjust loft on the driver face, that’s going to affect the flight of the ball the most.

The way the driver face fits you, and how it fits your swing is going to be the most important. The shaft is the fine-tuning.

I’m the engine, the club head is the transmission, and then this is just some fine-tuning details here. So we’re not really that worried about what the club shaft is.

Again, buy a good shaft, by all means if you tried a thousand-dollar shaft, and you hit it fantastic, and you’ve got the money to spend, get the driver, there’s no problem with that.

But just don’t assume that something that’s more expensive is going to be better, because from my experience, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on drivers that were worse than this $80 driver right here.

One thing that’s interesting to note, a myth is that if I make the club shorter, I’m going to be straighter and I’m probably going to play better. Now that’s not always the case.

What I found from my testing, when I’ve seen other testing out there, if I can lengthen this driver, pretty much everybody swings faster and everybody hits the ball a little farther with a longer driver.

Now when you do this, for some players, they lose consistency, meaning the don’t hit the center of the club face as much. So try lengthening your driver.

There’s actually shaft extensions you can put in here. This club, I usually hit my driver fairly straight, so I’m actually swinging a 46 to 46-and-a-half-inch driver.

I have a shaft extension that costs like $3, you glue them into your club, and it makes this drier longer than what the stock driver is. I like to do that with all my drivers, and that gets you a little bit more distance.

If you try that out, you’re going to probably hit it a little farther, and then see if you lose some dispersion. There’s no guarantee that you make this driver longer you pick up 10 yards, you’re going to hit it any more wild.

I’ve found players add length to the club, and hit it straighter because they just like the feel of it a little bit better. So try that out, the longer the club doesn’t mean it’s going to be wild and erratic.

Now if you do lengthen the club and it starts going a little bit more sideways, by all means, shorten it up. Maybe go a little bit shorter.

Find that perfect trade-off between what’s the best distance and accuracy for you. The cool thing about this is, it costs, like I said, you take a grip off, some people with even remove and save the grip for you.

You put a $3 shaft extension in there, a $5 shaft extension, you put the grip back on, it costs you $10 or $15 to test this out with your local golf pro changing this out for you.

You buy a new driver, it’s a $500 test, it’s a $300 test, whatever it is. It’s way easier to test lengthening and shortening the club than it is testing a brand-new driver.

The last thing here is that loft, wildly misunderstood. Really the loft that’s printed on your golf club, so this is an 8°, in reality, the sweet spot of your club, this is a 9.8° loft club.

The loft that’s printed on the club face, just to come out right into say it. Most of the manufacturers cheat on that number a little bit. Here’s the reason why.

They know that players want to hit, for years and years, pro players had an 8° driver, or a 7° driver, or a 9° driver. So they know that good players associate a low lofted club with a good, quality driver.

When in reality, most of the drivers today are getting higher and higher and higher lofted. Don’t worry about what this loft says on the bottom.

Try different lofts out, that’s going to be the number one factor that’s going to change the flight of your ball. If I go from an 8° that’s written on this club, it’s really close to a 10°, and I got to a 9°, that’s really going to affect the way my ball flies.

It’s going to launch much higher and get much more spin. If I go to a 10°, that’s going to be way different. Even more important than the head is the loft.

Try out several different lofts, find out which one works best for you. Play around with it a little bit.

But again, the real hack here, the real tip that I can give you that’s going to save you the most money, take your current driver before you ever buy another club, test it out side by side.

If the new driver out performs your old driver, get the new driver. If not, put it to the side, don’t buy the marketing hype, unless it really outperforms the one that you have right now.

All right guys, so hope you got a lot out of this video, hope you really enjoyed the content here. But let’s face it, the number one thing isn’t the clubs.

Like I said, Dustin Johnson can hit a 300-yard drive with a woman’s club, right? The number one thing is you being the athlete.

You have the ability to improve your game much more than any club can improve your game for you. I think it all starts with the number one fundamental, which is the Stable Fluid Spine.

If I can get my spine angle consistent throughout the swing, so I’m just rotating around my spine, my head’s staying stable, my body is moving or swaying around a lot, that makes solid contact that much more easy, makes it way more fun to play golf.

So here’s what I want you to do. If you’re a member of the website, go to the Top Speed Golf System, go to the Stable Fluid Spine section, and start working through level one right there.

As you go through those videos, and you start working into video three, video four, then you go into the second level, that’s going to become like muscle memory. You’re going to become automatic.

You’re going to have that nice, stable fluid spine, you going to have some great contact, and golf is going to be a lot more fun. But the best part, you won’t have to think about it.

Once we get in those reps, it just happens automatically. What we don’t want to do is watch one single video and say OK, this is a great idea, and then bounce around to different videos all over the place.

We want to stay focused in that system. If we can work through that system, we’re going to be able to pay the dividends on that for the rest of our career.

Best of luck, and I’ll see you in the Stable Fluid Spine.