Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "How to Hit the Driver Straight - Real Student Lesson"

Do your drives look like straight shots down the fairway?

Or… do they more closely resemble a roller coaster ride?!

The problem often lies in how your hands move through impact.

Today, I’m joined by my buddy and former professional golfer Casey Vancil…

…and I’ll show you what you are doing wrong with your hands and the fix.

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 17:23

Video Transcription:

Clay: Hey, it's great to have you here today. I got an awesome series of videos we're doing with my friend here, Casey Vansel, very good player, struggles with the driver a little bit as most players do. I mean, when I go out, I'd say that's probably one of the biggest things that people want to work on is how do I hit my driver straight?

Now, the cool thing is we're going to actually measure this. So we're going to do real drills. If it doesn't work as we progress, then you're going to know what I'm teaching and talking about. And what he's doing is all a big load of baloney and you shouldn't listen to us. Uh, but if they do get well, if they do.

If he does perform well and these drills work, then you'll see as he progresses along with this. We already started a little bit of these drills, so I do have a little, a little sneak peek into what's coming because he had some good rounds here lately. But the very first thing we did here, um, or what I should say and the research is showing, you want to be able to hit the ball straight.

So Casey, why don't you sit up to the golf ball and imagine if I want to hit this drive, let's say we're going to hit it over this bunker here that you can see in front of us. If I feel like I over accelerate the club, meaning I really rip my hands in front. So the body, the shoulders kind of spin out, the body spins out, the club gets stuck behind.

Look at where this face is pointing. It's pointing over to the right somewhere. So anytime that he over accelerates, so give me an example, like a practice swing, where you really over accelerate. You don't even have to hit a ball there, right? So he's just kind of holding it off and never getting the club face to release.

You can almost hear it doesn't really whoosh until way up there somewhere. That's going to tend to leave the face open and that ball is going to be a block slice to the right if that happens. The opposite of that would be as he's coming down, the body should at some point in here decelerate and the club passes the hands.

So now showing one where the club releases kind of finished like three quarters of the way through. And now you can see that these hands, as he came through, have rolled over each other. Left arm and right forearm have kind of gone around each other, folded over each other, and this face is released here.

So if we're turning, turning toward the camera to where the face would be toward the camera there. If he's holding off, face is open toward the sky, block slice, do the opposite now where you release, and now this face is really turning over down to the ground. And that's going to be more of a draw type face.

So basically all that means as you're hitting the golf ball, as you release it, you want it to be square. If he over releases it, it's a hook. If he over accelerates late, it's a block slice to the right and the face is open. So what the research shows is that if I purposely try to work on both those variables, so if I purposely hold some over to block slice them, if I purposely over release them and get a Then what will happen is in my brain, I'll start to put the pieces together.

I'll say, okay, when I feel this, it goes to the right and slices. When I feel this, it goes to the left and hooks. And then I can start to bring that tighter and tighter together. So we kicked all this off. Uh, let's have you demonstrate. We'll get into that here in a second. Demonstrate the block slice. So over accelerate, hold the face open, lots of body, very little hands.

Can't make him miss. All the release drills, he hit that one pretty straight. So this time, really the feeling you're going to have here if you do this the wrong way is, as you get to here, really trying to get the body to open up and you're really feeling like the face never gets away from the target. So the face holds straight to the target the whole time.

So really do an exaggerated one here so people can see it. There we go. And that ball started out right of the bunker. Faded even more right of the bunker. That's the one that's in the trees or possibly even out of bounds. So if you're blocking them to the right, this is what's happening. There's no other thing that causes the face to be open.

This is just saying the forces I'm putting into the handle of the club through impact are causing the face to stay open. And again, if you look at that from here, if I have this face square and all of a sudden I yank his hands in front, that makes the club face want to kick back this way and open up. So anytime you block it or slice it, that's what's going on.

There's too much dragging of the handle late in the downswing that forces the face to be open. Another little side effect of that, let's say I over accelerate and the face is forced open, I may sense that as I do that too many blocks to the right, slam the hand stopped, and then try to save it at the last second.

And now I've slammed the face closed and I hook it. So anytime that you block slice it, It's an over acceleration of the hands late in the swing that forces the face open. You may try to counteract that by still having that same acceleration, and then slamming it shut and throwing it the other way. So if you feel like you have a lot of hands in the golf swing, the drills we're going to go over takes the hands out of it, makes it a lot smoother.

But that's exactly what's going on. The most typical, again, just so you know if this is you, the most typical way that I see this is players will start down steep, with the club steep, They'll pop up out of their posture, pull their hands toward the target. Now, all of a sudden, that club drops in behind them and is open.

And then if they try to save it the last second, they flip it shut. That's that big snap hook to the left. So there's lots of misses with that type of swing. Now let's go into the release swing, do the exact opposite here, and it would be shallowing the club out more from the inside, really letting that face turn on over, and it's going to start to the right, and then it's going to draw back, or even on this one, we're going to exaggerate, and it'll snap hook here.

There we go, and that's that low, quick hook to the left. So anytime you block it to the right or slice it, the hands are accelerating too much toward the target at impact, that's forcing the face open and it blocks slices. Anytime you hook it, the hands are over decelerating, the club is flying past, and the club face closes.

So we're stopping the hands and rolling it over too much. If we hook it, We're keeping the hands going and keeping the face open if we slice it. There's nothing else that you can do that causes those types of shot patterns. So, once you're aware of that, what I'd like for you to do is hit about 10 shots alternating.

Big block, slice, big hook. Big block, slice, big hook. Now, to measure this, what we did is, we had Casel, before we went over any of this with him, he hit 15 shots toward, you can probably see a red flag way in the distance. And a yellow flag. I don't know if you can see those, but those are about 20 yards apart.

And what we did is we had him hit 15 drives and try to split the center of that. This is before we went over any instruction, just hitting normal shots. And we had a little trouble. 

Casey: Yeah, that's just say it lightly. I'm the guy that when I hit it, well, I hit it really, really well. But then when I miss it, I really miss it.

Clay: Yeah. So he, he lay some 320 right down the middle. And the good ones, he had two out of the 15 shots that ended up between that 20 yard wide gap. That's a tight gap, so you're not going to, even the pros are not going to have that many, like a real high percentage out of there. Those were great shots, but we also had six that would have been out of bounds.

So basically, if you take the center of that aiming point, usually you have about at least roughly 80 yards between trouble on the right and left. So basically, you walk up to a hole and there's water on the left. You take the edge of the water. And you go 80 yards to the right of that, you usually have about that much space before you hit more water or out of bounds or another hazard or something like that.

So usually, if you think about it like this, I've got around 80 yards gap between trouble on the left and trouble on the right. And when I say trouble, I don't mean like trees or bunkers or rough. I'm talking actually penalty areas. So we want to track when we hit those 15 shots, how many went in that 20 yard wide gap.

He got two out of 15 right now. If we do our drills correctly, we haven't retested yet, but if we do those, we're going to see that number go up to three, four, five, seven, eight, whatever we can get to, we'll know we're getting better. Um, if he doesn't do those well, then it's going to stay down around two or three.

Second part of that is we're going to measure how many of those went outside of the 80 yard wide gap. So where you're using a track man. That means it's 120 feet or more to the left or 120 feet or more to the right of the exact point we're aiming at. So that, that gives us again, 40 yards left, 40 yards, right.

That's at 80 yards. He had six of them out of 15 that got past that 120 feet each way. Half of them were left, half of them were right. And those would have been at least one stroke penalties if not two stroke penalties. So when things get off track, they got more and more off track. So what I had Casey do here, just like we just did on that drill, As I had him work on learning how to roll and release the club to get it to square up.

And one of the things we worked on, if you go and dress this ball again, or kind of scoot to the inside up, this is like imaginary ball, so we don't hit it. Whenever we came down, he was very used to trying to keep the hands toward the target and try to keep this face square all the way through there. I wanted him to feel like this club was loose in his hands.

His hands were very light. And when he released it. There was really not much hands going on, so he's just letting the momentum of the club release, and as he came on through, we're going to stop at this point, forearms folded over each other, face is turned over. If we did that wrong, it would look more like that, the face would still be open.

So he's going to alternate. I had him do about 20 swings where he just did this drill, no hitting balls, just feeling the face roll over. And then the very next one, he felt like the face stayed square. That was more of an acceleration of the hands, not letting the club face pass the hands. And that would be that block slice.

So just really like getting the feel of what causes a block slice or a slice in general, what causes a hook. So we're specifically trying to train to hit. Slices and hooks in our mind and then we go and do the drills. Now once we did that he would hit shots to where We'll go over that in the next video exactly how we did it But we would purposely try to hook a shot and then purposely try to slice a shot So now he's getting pretty good at it.

So let's see if we can toggle back between four shots Let's see if you can get the first one you want to do hook or slice first Okay, so this is a hook, meaning he's going to slow his body down, let that club pass, and he's really going to exaggerate it. We're talking super exaggerated, big time hook on this one.

There we go. So that started toward the right side of that gap, and really hooked over toward the left side of it. Now one of the tricks there is to feel like you're soft with your hands. If I feel like I'm death gripping it and really trying to muscle it through there, that face is never going to turn over, and I'm not even going to be able to feel where the face is.

Um, we stay soft with it and a good drill for that is when he sets up, he's going to be real light grip pressure and keep that grip pressure light the entire swing and feel like, what would I have to do to get that ball to hook by keeping that light grip pressure? So you can actually feel the head. One of the little tips, tricks I showed him was flip that club upside down.

Like we did there in the beginning, take the club and swing it like this, do that same thing. So we're thinking hook swings, really getting to turn on over. So really he's trying to feel where the tip of the club is. It doesn't weigh anything now. Cause it's just the butt end of the shaft. But once he did that a few times, we flipped it back over again.

And again, tried to feel that hook type swing that club really turning over. So you want to feel like the club face is wrapping around the outside of the golf ball, and then we hit a shot. Now, as soon as you get one hook, we're going to go to the slice side. We feel the exact opposite bodies rushing through impact faces being held off, held open.

The toe of the club never passes the, the club head itself. And this is going to be that big block slice. So it's really exaggerated here.

Right. And that one started toward the left and cut back in the opposite direction. So you'd be, I don't know, what was your sensation when you first started doing it, did it feel like you could tell where the face was? 

Casey: It was hard to really feel it. I had to do it probably 20 or 30 reps. Just swinging the, the grip really helped.

So when I went back to, when I turned it upside down, so when I went back to just swinging the regular golf club, I could feel where the head was. My problem was I was releasing it so late, like you just mentioned. And so getting that feel for where is the face? Where is the club? Where is it releasing?

That helped a lot. Just that feeling. 

Clay: Nice. And then we toggled back and forth a few times between those drills. And in the first day, I wouldn't say we were hitting it. Great. I hit balls with you when we were doing it. You'd think we were both 30 handicaps, right? Like it was 

Casey: brutal. 

Clay: So it's one of those drills to where you do it first and you're like, I can't feel the face and I don't really have any control of the ball flight.

It's, it's going all over the place. It took a few days for me to really get good at the, at the drills. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like you try it and you try to slice one and it doesn't slice, you pull it or whatever. But as you do it a couple of times, you start to develop techniques to be able to feel the face and then it starts to get better.

Right. So, recently, you went out and played, what, six, seven holes the other day, yesterday, or something like that? Yeah, I played 

Casey: seven holes yesterday, what I had time for. And I hit four out of the five fairways, and I was three under, and I putted bad. Man, I was like, man, if I had more time, I need to give this thing a run.

Clay: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's crazy how it feels so hard in the beginning, when you're doing it, but because of the research and because of the, these, these, uh, the drills and what they make you feel. It reorganizes your brain to be able to feel the club face. So basically the research shows that your brain has to have an idea of what causes both sides of the issue.

So if I know what causes a slice and I know what causes a hook and I can do those on command, then it's much, much easier to feel like the club face is square. And I just kind of split the difference in between those and I'll kind of share some of the, as we progress through the drills, what we did there.

Um, but yeah, I mean, already way better. I mean, I've seen Casey hit shots, shots that were, like I said, six out of 15 hooking and slicing out of bounds and really having a tough time controlling the face to where when you've done drills before, you even said you had to tighten up the dispersions to make it more of a challenge.

So recently he went over and got, uh, what 18 out of 18 shots hitting each shot shape. So meaning that he purposely to draw purposely at a fade. Back and forth, back and forth and got 18 in a row where it had the correct starting side. So if the draw started to the right, they all drew correct. Starting side on the phase mean they started left and they all faded.

So we went from having very difficult time getting just a few to just in a little over a week or so. Being able to get 18 in a row that did that. So if it starts out, I'm going to tell you right now, you're not going to do well at it. It's going to be awful. You're going to think there's no way I can get this down, but if you just keep doing the drills for even, uh, even just a few practice sessions, you'll develop a feel of what the clubface is doing.

Now, if I never vary it, then I never get a feel for what it's doing. Maybe I'm over accelerating, holding it open and slicing, and I can't fix it because I really don't know what the opposite of that is. Or maybe I have a snap hook and I'm hooking the heck out of everything. And I can't stop it because I haven't gotten a feel for what makes a slice to the right.

So, uh, we're going to, what we're going to do in the, through this progressions over the next few weeks, we're going to track the drills. We're going to share them with you. We're going to show you exactly what he did and hopefully get some fantastic results and you can do the drills right along with us, but for today's practice session, 20 reps, just no ball.

Feeling the clubface release to get a hook, feeling the clubface hold open to get a big slice. Then if you have time to go out to the range, hit about 10 shots, which is what I call a win shift, lose, stay. Meaning you're trying to hit a hook. You keep on going until you hit a hook. That's a win. And then you go to the fade side.

You keep on going to hit a fade or a slice. I don't care if the ball, when you're on the hook side draws one foot or a hundred yards, anything that curves the right way is good. Same thing on the fade. Anything that curves any amount on the other way. is really good. Um, once we do that, let's do 10 successful shots.

So when shift loose, stay 10 shots, alternating one good draw. And then as soon as I get one, I count that I go over to the second to the fade side. As soon as I get one, I count that I've done two good shots. Go back to the draw side. As soon as I hit a draw, it's a good one there. Do 20 shots and you're going to be, be well on your way.

If you want to throw a little bonus in of filling the club head, that could be really helpful too. So in the next video, we're going to talk about how we kind of reign this in a little bit. So we go from these big shot shapes to starting to control those and actually teach you how to eliminate almost all the trouble on the course by giving you huge margin for error.

And I'll do that next video. Now, the next thing I would work on a little bonus, or what I would take as the next steps that builds on this is that in a series of indoor videos. So if you go to the vault section on the website, if you're a member of top speed golf, go to the vault section, go to the indoor section.

And on the very last three videos, I'll walk you through a progression that shows you not only how to get those fades and draws, but to also make ball then first contact. The cool thing about this is you can do it right from your living room. So if you can't make it out to the range, if you can't go out to practice, literally all you need is a piece of carpet to hit off of, uh, you can go outside in your yard and make swings in your, in your driveway or inside of your yard, totally fine with it.

But that's what I challenge you to do today. Head on over to the indoor section, do those drills, and not only are we going to straighten out your driver. We're going to get ball, then turf contact on your irons. We're going to make it way easier to hit consistently solid shots off the ground. So no more of those chunks and thin shots.

And I'll walk you through all that in that indoor section. Best of luck. And I'll see you there.