Why You Need This: Today you'll answer "Have You Been Hitting Your Driver Wrong Your Whole Life?"

There are 3 very common mistakes that I see being made all the time...

...that make it nearly impossible to maximize your distance or be consistent with your driver.

The good news is that 2 of the 3 are super simple to fix...

...and the other just needs a little practice (once you know what it is).

Watch today's video to make sure you're avoiding these distance killers...

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 9:48

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: Now we all want to crush those drives dead straight, long down the middle of the fairway. There’s a couple things that make that nearly impossible.

If I’m teeing the ball up where about half the ball is above my crown just like you see here, it may make it nearly impossible if I swing correctly to not hit thin on the bottom of the club face, you’re going to lose a lot of distance when you do that.

Same thing with my shoulder position. If I get it too far forward, now I’m going to have to lose lag, I’m going to cast, I’m going to flip, and worst of all, your drives are going to be inconsistent and they’re not going to be very far down the fairway.

I’m going to talk about the solutions to those and a couple other key tricks in this video. Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so let’s jump right in. I’m going to hit a couple shots and talk about some of these key mistakes that we all can make. Q’s going to read some of our FlightScope numbers here on the radar, so he’s going to be tracking these shots.

Number one is going to be the tee height. Time and time again I see players that are setting up the ball with about half the ball above the crown of the club.

So meaning that half the ball sticking up above this top edge of the driver. Now when that’s happening, that’s OK if I’m swinging level or down into the golf ball.

If I’m kind of hitting down into my drives, I’m going to lose some distance, I’m going to hit it inconsistent, but that tee height is about OK if I’m hitting down into it.

So if I hit a drive, you know I’m hitting down, a big slice into the trees, lost tons of speed and tons of distance.

I was actually able to hit on the top of the club face where I want to, but we’re going to talk about why this is all just a giant mess and go through that here in a second.

First let’s look at that first swing, doing it incorrectly. What was my club head speed, what was my distance? What happened on that shot?

Quentin Patterson: Club head speed was about 100, distance was 227. You hit down on it 5.9°.

Clay: OK, so there driving it incorrectly, a couple things are going on. Number one, I had that ball tee height too low, so only about half the ball was sticking up over my driver head.

Now if you want to hit it far, if you want to really get that high launch, you want to be swinging up into the ball.

So there I was kind of chopping down into the ball, that’s one of the most common things I see. I’d say probably 80 or more percent of players that I see are hitting down into their drives which is not a good thing.

I want to be hitting up into the drives. Problems lies in this tee height.

If I tee it up where just half the ball is over the crown, if my club reaches it’s low point behind the golf ball and starts moving up into the golf ball which is exactly what we want to be doing, look how now I’d be hitting off the bottom of the driver.

When I hit thin off the bottom of the driver I lose all kinds of distance, just like we saw there. I have to make contact on the top half of the club face, that’s what’s going to make it launch higher, spin less, and carry a mile.

So instead of teeing that ball half a ball above my driver face, I want to get a good three-quarters of the ball above the driver face.

Now we can see if I make the right kind of swing, how I can hit up into this golf ball and I still have room to hit it on the top half of the club face. That makes this a lot easier.

Let’s go ahead and try one there and we’re going to see that I pick up a whole lot more distance when I also stay behind it and tee it up a little bit higher. We’re going to get to the second part here in just one second.

All right, so much better on that one, much longer, right down the middle of the fairway. Not quite perfect yet, hit that one a little bit off the heel.

But let’s go ahead and go to the second key here after we talk about the numbers on that one. What was the stats on that one, Q?

Quentin: Club head speed was 118, total distance 308, and angle of attack you were hitting up on it about 1.3°.

Clay: So hit a little bit up on that one. Another big key there, I mentioned the second thing is, I don’t want to be sliding in front of this.

That first shot where I just kind of sliced it off in the woods it wasn’t any good, I was letting my shoulder get up in front of my ankle.

Now if you want to hit your drives far, what you want to do is something called the Compression Line. What I mean by this, that’s a term we use in the Top Speed Golf System.

What I mean by this is, at impact if I was to draw a line from my left ankle, the center of my left ankle, to the center of my left shoulder socket, that would be tilted away from the target.

This would be toward the target, I’d be chopping down on the ball, weak, short drives. This would be away from the target hitting up into the ball, long, powerful drives.

Now it’s not just that I’m away that’s helping me hit up on it, it’s good, it’s also the powerful position I’m in with my body.

When I get tilted away from the target, now look how it makes a lot of sense where I can have this lag and then release that out in front of the golf ball.

If I was up here and I had a lot of lag, I would swing right over top of the golf ball, wouldn’t make sense. So from here I can get lag, release that in the golf ball. I’m going to hit it a lot farther.

So here notice on this swing, my compression line. I’m going to feel like as I set up to this golf ball, my head is behind the golf ball, my shoulder is behind my lead ankle, and I feel like I’m really going to get behind it and let everything release out through the golf ball.

So I’m getting my speed in front of the golf ball rather than chopping down into the golf ball. Let’s go ahead and try that out.

There we go, that one was perfect there. Couldn’t have hit that one much better. Going to have a positive angle of attack, I bet, and I stayed behind that one really nicely.

What were the numbers on that, Q?

Quentin: So 118 club head speed, total distance was 323 and the angle of attack was up 3°.

Clay: So up 3°, that’s about perfect there. One other last thing here, me and Q were talking a minute ago, and he was mentioning something that I thought was really interesting to me.

Why don’t you walk them through what you believe makes the most sense to get the third piece here, which would be ball position.

So where could I go wrong? Again, we don’t want to hit down into this, we saw how bad that can be. What do I need to do with my ball position to get it right?

Quentin: We often have heard that we want to play the ball off the inside of our lead foot. That can be a fine position for a lot of people, but what happens is we all have different stance widths.

If you play that ball off the inside of your lead foot, do a narrow stance for me. Basically what we want to happen, is we want this club to bottom out, and then work up into the golf ball.

Typically where that club is bottoming out is about right in your armpit there. If you look here, if he has a narrow stance and he plays that ball off the inside if his lead foot, on the armpit, that might even be a little bit ahead of the golf ball, depending on the camera angle.

Clay: So might hit down, going to be tough to hit up on that from this narrow stance here. I’d be kind of falling off if I did that.

Quentin: Definitely don’t want to be doing that. If you had a very wide stance, now if you step that back foot back, there you go.

You play off the inside of your foot now, that armpit might be too far behind the ball, and the club might be coming in, bottoming out, and then working up into the ball and hitting bad thin shots that you don’t want to be hitting.

Those are going to be the really thin ones that really balloon up into the air.

Clay: So kind of the other extreme, I get way back here and now I’m going almost hit the ground or thin it, you know?

Quentin: Right. So what we really want to do is play that ball in relationship to our upper body.

Now I found that off the outside of your lead shoulder is actually a great way, a great place to play the ball because that allows the club to bottom out about where the armpit is.

Then work up a few inches into the golf ball so you can get that nice, upward angle of attack so you can get that high launch, low spin, those are the drives that we all want.

So Clay, how about you hit one here where you display that really good ball position and see what kind of numbers we get.

Clay: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense to me too, because as long as I keep this in relationship to my shoulder, I could have my feet narrow and I’d still be in a good spot to where I could hit up on it.

I could have my feet really wide, and maybe the ball would look like it’s a little farther back in my stance, but it’s still in that good position. I like that a lot.

So I’m going to play off the outside of my shoulder. I’ve got the correct tee height, and I have what’s called the Compression Line, I’m staying behind the golf ball.

When I put all three of those together, I’m going to adjust in a position here to where I can really get a lot of lag, I can swing through this golf ball and gets tons of speed, and I’m going to be pretty consistent while I’m doing that.

Let’s go ahead and give it a shot. There we go, that might have been the best one of the several that I’ve hit. What were the stats on that one there, Q?

Quentin: So still in the air. All right, so it just came down. 117 club head speed, total distance 331, you were hitting up on it, almost 6°.

Clay: Yeah, so you can see there as I started to go up and up more, the ball flew higher, got lower spin, and it went a heck of a lot longer.

So follow those three keys, you’re going to hit the best drives of your life.

Now teeing up the ball the right height is really easy. Just tee it up a little bit higher, that’s simple. Get the ball in the correct ball position at address outside of the left shoulder.

Again, easy. You can fix that in a couple seconds. Getting that Compression Line right is where I see a lot of players really start to struggle.

If you’ve been the player that slides in front of it, you’re losing tons of distance, you’re hitting down on it, it’s not going to be nearly as much fun as if you’re hitting those big, high, booming drives.

That’s why I recommend going through the Compression Line in the Top Speed Golf System. Click on the instruction tab, go to the Top Speed Golf System, then the Compression Line.

As you go through there, it’s going to walk you through a series of drills that are going to build on top of what we did here today.

Feeling like you stay behind the golf ball, getting that lag like we talked about, clearing the body out of the way so you can really get the power through the golf ball, all that stuff is going to become instinctual.

You get right out of the car, you go right to the first hole, and you’re automatically doing that. That’s what feels comfortable to you but you have to go through the different levels.

Go through level one, level two, as you work your way into level three, things are going to get really easy with this.

So best of luck, I can’t wait to see you in the Compression Line and hear about just how much better you’re hitting the ball as you work through it.