Why You Need This: Today you'll discover the "Iron vs Driver Setup Basics"

With nearly every video I've ever made...

...there's inevitably going to be a comment asking if the same principles apply to both irons and woods.

So today, you're going to discover the secrets of playing your best golf all the way through your bag...

...as I'll go over the differences in your driver swing versus what you should be doing with your iron swing.

Including one secret about your driver setup that you don't hardly ever hear about (at the 1:14 mark of the video)...

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Quentin Patterson    

Video Duration: 9:14

Video Transcription:

Clay Ballard: All right, so the difference between a driver and an iron. Obviously if we look down here, these are set up about where they should be if I was addressing the shot.

Look at the difference in the ball position. Look at the difference in the angle of the shaft. Do I need to make different swings if I’m hitting a driver or I’m hitting an iron, and how should I adjust my set up to really give myself the best opportunity to hit solid shots?

That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to hit several shots with each in today’s video, and Q’s going to help me read the numbers.

We’re going to talk about some of the secrets of playing your best golf all the way through the bag from a wedge all the way up to the big stick. Let’s go ahead and get started.

All right, so let’s jump right in. Now on a driver, we want to hit up into the golf ball. You’ve probably heard that before.

The reason that makes it better with a driver is if I can hit up into the golf ball it’s going to launch a little higher, and it’s going to decrease the spin which basically means that ball is going to kind of get up in the air and it’s going to rocket through there.

It’s not going to get caught up in the wind, it’s just going to penetrate right through the wind and go as far as possible if I do that.

Now one thing that you probably haven’t maybe paid attention to, or maybe you haven’t heard enough, is whenever I put the ball up in my stance, if you imagine this being like a hula hoop, I’m going more to the left as I go up the hula hoop.

I want to line up a little bit to the right, so now when I swing up on it it’s going square toward my target. So let me go ahead and really try to hit up on this one.

I’m going to put it well up in my stance, and let’s see how far this ball goes. There we go, so I hit that one a mile in the air. Q, how far did that one carry and what was my angle of attack on that one?

Quentin Patterson: So that one carried 300 yards. Your angle of attack was 6.1° up on the ball.

Clay: OK, so when I hit up on it 6°, and that’s quite a bit, that’s hitting up as I’m making contact with the ball. It’s going to make it launch much higher, and go pretty far in the air.

Now when I hit down on it, let’s do the opposite, I’m actually going down the hula hoop, which would make me want to hit it in the water here, so I’m going to have to line up well to the left when I do this.

Now let me go ahead and try to hit one hitting down on it, and that was a low rocket. It’s in the fairway. That thing’s going to run, but it’s not going to carry nearly as much. So the first one carried 300 yards, that one carried a little shorter.

Quentin: That one carried 244 yards, and you actually hit down on it 6° that time.

Clay: Yeah, so the exact opposite. First one was up 6°, carried 300. Second was down 6°, carried 245. Now if you’re in a firm fairway, that may work out completely fine.

I bet that ball rolled out pretty far, but not going to work that good when it’s soft outside. So typically, you always want to play the ball a little bit more toward your left heel when hitting a driver.

Now unfortunately, when you’re hitting an iron, we don’t have a choice. We have to hit down on the golf ball because the ground’s in the way.

If I was going to hit up to try to maximize how far I could carry this 8 iron, I would hit behind the golf ball before I got to the hitting up part.

If I miss the ground, then I would hit it a little thin when I’m doing that. So unfortunately with an iron, you’re not going to be able to maximize absolutely as far as you could hit it.

You have to play the ball a little bit more toward the middle of your stance. What I like to do, is play it in relationship to my left foot. So I’m going to be about six or eight inches behind my left foot.

Now when I have a wedge and my stance is a little bit closer together, the ball’s going to be a little bit farther back in my stance. It’s going to look farther back. It’s still about six or eight inches behind my left foot.

When I have a 3 wood and my stance is wider, it may look like it’s a little bit more up in my stance, but in relationship to my left foot, again, it’s about six or eight inches behind it.

So everything that you hit off the ground whether it’s a lob wedge or a 3 wood, anything that’s on the ground is going to be about that far behind your left foot.

Let’s go ahead and try one out now with an 8 iron. We’ll see my angle of attack and my carry distance. All right, so just a hair thin on that one.

Probably didn’t hit down on it as much as I should have, just wasn’t a perfect shot, but not too bad. Took a little bit of a brush with the ground there.

What was the carry distance on that one, Q, and the angle of attack?

Quentin: So the carry distance was 170 yards and you hit down it 6.5°.

Clay: OK, so I’m hitting down on that because the ground’s in the way. I don’t have an option of hitting up on it.

That’s why we’re going to play it six, eight inches behind our left foot. With a driver we’re going to be more on the inside heel.

Now the second thing is, how far do we have some forward shaft lean here? With an iron, I’m going to feel like I have a little more forward shaft lean, the shaft leaning forward.

Now with a driver, I don’t have as much. Mostly, that’s just because of the ball position that we just talked about.

This ball’s in the middle of my stance, my hands are kind of on the inside of my left leg. The shaft is leaning forward. With a driver, now the ball is on my left heel.

My hands are still in front of my left leg here, but now the club shaft is more straight up and down because the ball position is farther up like that.

So I wouldn’t worry too much about the exact angle of the forward shaft lean, because it’s going to change in the downswing anyways.

For example, I could go ahead and have negative shaft lean with my iron and then make a swing and actually hit it pretty solid.

So I had forward shaft lean when I came to contact even though I set up this way. So there’s no real secret on how to set up your hands.

If you’re flipping the club a little bit, leaning the shaft forward like that isn’t going to guarantee that you’re leaning the shaft forward when you actually hit the golf ball.

You really want to make sure in your downswing with an iron, your hands are in front. Same swing with the driver.

My hands are still going to be on this left leg at impact, but because my ball position is farther forward, I’m not going to get as much forward shaft lean.

So long story short, don’t do any changes with what you feel like you’re doing with your swing with an iron or a driver.

Now what about when we’re hitting the driver, how wide should our stance be? This is a great one to test out. What I want you to do is to get a really narrow stance and try to hit your driver.

Go ahead and try to hit it hard, try to make a full swing here, but I’m going to have my feet only about 10 inches apart.

So there, I felt like I put out a lot of effort. I hit that one as solid as I can hit a golf ball. I can’t do any better than that, but I bet my swing speed and my total distance is down a little bit.

What are the numbers on that one, Q?

Quentin: Club head speed was 109 miles per hour, and total distance was about 280.

Clay: Yeah, so 109 and 280? Let me go ahead and use a wider stance now, try to swing with the same amount of effort and let’s see what it does.

There we go, much more solid. I can see the ball right now is still 40 feet in the air and it’s probably carrying over where the last one landed. Going to be a little bit farther.

Quentin: Total distance on that one was 312, and your club head speed went up to 118.

Clay: So picked up about 10 miles an hour club head speed. Doesn’t matter if you’re swinging 80 miles an hour right now, or 140 miles an hour right now.

With a narrower stance, you’re going to be slower than what you could be. As you widen your stance, it’s going to be a little bit faster.

My rule of thumb is always to say make the stance as wide as you feel comfortable doing. I always like to error on wider stance rather than shorter.

Now when you get into a longer shot, or a shorter shot, excuse me, with an iron, I’m going to naturally go a little bit narrower.

Again, I would rather you be on the wider side to get more power out of the shot, but you’re going to be slightly narrower, usually with a middle iron, about shoulder-width apart is good.

As you go into a shorter iron and maybe you’re only hitting it 50 or 60 yards, you’re going to be narrower there because we really don’t need power. We’re just looking for sequencing and timing.

If I’m hitting a little wedge shot, my feet are going to be real close together like this, a chip or a pitch. Then as I go longer with the club, gets wider and wider.

As I go all the way out to the driver, it’s going to be the widest stance. So rule of thumb, get as wide as you’re comfortable with getting. That’s going to tend to lead to more power.

As you get to where you don’t need to make a full swing, then you can narrow it up.

Now one thing that’s going to be consistent with all your full swings, from a wedge all the way up to a driver, is you want to be tilted slightly away from the ball.

I call this the Stable Fluid Spine in our Top Speed Golf System, but if I can get my spine tilted away, what’s going to happen there is now I can maintain that same rough spine angle in the backswing, and then I’m going to have that spine angle tilted away from the target in the downswing.

That makes it really stable. I can hit the low point of my swing consistently. If I’m hitting an iron, I can put that divot in the same spot day in and day out.

If I’m hitting a driver, I can consistently deliver the sweet spot of the club to the back of the golf ball. If I start moving around a bunch, and my head’s moving around, my spine angle’s moving around, it’s almost impossible to play really consistent golf.

So what I want you to do now, click the Instruction tab on the home screen. Go to the Top Speed Golf System, and the go work through the Stable Fluid Spine section.

As you go to level one, level two, level three, you start working through there, this becomes really fun because you start to see the quality of your shots go up. You start to hit a lot more solid shots.

The cool thing is, once you work through these levels and you do the drills, you never have to worry about it again. You’re always going to kind of set up in that, because it becomes completely ingrained.

So I can’t wait to help you with the Stable Fluid Spine, I’ll see you there. Let’s go ahead and get started now.