Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "The DIFFERENCE | Driver Vs Iron | Setup & Swing Basics"

In today's lesson...

...I'll explain what's exactly the same and what's different between your driver swing and your iron swing...

...including the specific thing you MUST get right that's very different.

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 8:11

Video Transcription:

All right. Driver versus an iron. Well, there's a lot of similarities. I'm going to go over this video, but there's one very specific thing that you need to get right. It's very different if you get that right. Super easy. To hit this now with a driver. What am I trying to do? I'm trying to get the ball to launch high up in the air with the least amount of spin as possible.

So I want to play this ball on my front foot. Anywhere in this general vicinity is fine. Every player can have a little bit different based on your swing, but somewhere in this front foot is where you want it. Now, what that means is, as I make my normal golf swing, I'm going to reach my low point kind of in the middle of the stance about where this ball is.

My six iron would be. And then I'm going to start to swing up into the ball that I'm hitting with my driver now that allows it to launch higher and spin less. If I was to play the driver in the middle of my stance, it would be coming. I would either be hitting slightly down on the golf ball or level with golf ball, which is not what you'd want, and get that ball that launches lower and starts to spin up.

Now, with my six iron, you can imagine I can take the same set up. And the only difference is I'm going to have a little bit narrower of a stance. It's going to bring both feet in together. Now, my six iron kind of to the back of the ball's in the middle of my stance again, depending on your swing can be a little bit farther forward or farther back.

That would be fine. But I really don't want to put the six iron way back here and the back of my stance and chop down on it. I could do some bad things like start to cast. To compensate for that, I don't want it up here because it gets very difficult to compress the golf ball. Now, if you're looking at this again, I'm going to go ahead and take a stance.

It's kind of somewhere in the middle of that with a driver. I like to go ahead and have the inside of my feet on my shoulders or almost the outside of my shoulders. I like it nice and wide. When you look at the most powerful hitters, this is what they're doing. So if I was to draw a vertical line from inside of my heel, you would see that basically would come to the outside of my shoulder if I'm standing straight up and down.

I could do that with both feet for my irons. I like to be a little bit narrower. I don't mind having a slightly wide stance even with my irons. So if I took that same line from inside of my heel straight up now it's hitting more in the middle of my shoulders or just slightly outside of the middle of my shoulders right around in here would be great.

Now you'll see that if I put my hands in the same spot because of these ball differences, the placement in the ball is different. If I put my hand in the same spot and grab the club with this iron, I have tons of what's called Shaft Lean and leaning in front. Now, the pros, what they're doing is they're taking the normal amount of loft where the club would be straight up and down, and they're taking about 30% of that off with an iron.

So you can see now that's basically what's happening. My hands are in the same spot, but the club's shaft angle is very different. Based on my ball position. Now, those things really you're making the same swing. You're going to have lag in the down swing. You're going to have a weight shift to the left. You're going to release the club out in front with both of those swings.

Very, very similar golf swings. There is one small difference when you're hitting a driver versus an iron. Now with a driver, I want to have what I call my compression line angled away from the target. So when I come down to impact here, when I studied 50 major winners on the PGA Tour, I looked at all the slow motion video and I measure these things.

What I found is that their left ankle to their left shoulder the left shoulder was behind the ankle. So the the hip and the shoulder were both behind this ankle. If you imagine, again, a vertical line like this, my shoulder is behind it to help me launch the ball higher and hit it nice and high and powerful. So let me go ahead and try that out here.

And a good key for this is when you hit your driver feel like your nose is staying behind the golf ball and your belt buckle is staying behind the golf ball and you're swinging from the inside. So I'm coming down in the slot and I'm releasing from the inside. When that happens, that's going to help it to launch at a pretty good angle here.

Anything over ten degrees launch is fantastic when you're hitting a driver. So let's go ahead and give it a whirl here.

There we go. We'll see that one. I may have the driver settings a little bit too low, actually. To 94. Only the second swing of the day. That one launched around eight degrees. So I'm either going to turn the loft up on my driver or play it a little bit farther up and stay a little bit farther behind it.

So if I was doing that, I'd make a few swings to get loosened up, see if I just happen to be hitting a little bit low today, or if I can make some some tweaks in my set up there. Now, with an iron, you're going to be doing the opposite. Instead of saying behind this golf ball to help get a more positive angle of attack Now I'm going to be stacked.

So as I make my swing, it's going to get this to where it'll read it on my launch monitor here. So as I go ahead, make this swing now instead of my left shoulder being behind my left heel, it's going to be over top of my left heel. From there, that allows me to hit down on the golf ball easier.

And that allows me to take a divot in front of this golf ball. So now when you watch this swing, you're going to see it looks very different.

So even though the mechanics of the swing were very similar. Good shot there. 197 yards with a six iron. Not to ban the mechanics for the same meaning that I felt like I had lag. I felt like I shifted my weight to the left. I felt like I release this club in front of the golf ball because my weight shifted a little bit more.

My left shoulder is over my ankle. It made it to where I could hit down into it a little bit more, which is exactly what I want to do with an iron. So for the swing keys here, I'm going to feel like I get my nose just on the back side of the golf ball, but my belt buckle is going to feel like it's in front of the golf ball now.

With the driver, it felt like it was behind it. So I'm letting my weight shift over my left side. Belt buckle is in front of the golf ball here. And those behind the golf ball, that's going to allow me to be really consistent with these irons There you go. Nice. Straight on there that allow me to be hit the ground after the golf ball every single time.

Now, one of the things that I mentioned here that's really important to getting either of these to work is we have to get from the slot from the inside and we can't be steep. And what I mean by this is almost all players, us you get this club to over the top, too steep at this point. Even players that do get the club from the inside tend to get it too steep and then kind of reroute it and save it at the bottom.

Now, if I want to be consistent, I've got to get it shallow when this club gets in the slot here. Now I can stay behind the golf ball, swing through it. It's going to be very consistent or if I get it shallow here, I can get my weight shift to the front, hit that iron really nice and consistent.

If I'm steep in this club gets too vertical like this, there's no way for me to really hit this golf ball on the upswing. There's going to be wanting to chop down into it too much, especially when I get my weight shift to the left. If I'm already steep Then what ends up happening is if I just continue to stay steep and chop down on it, it's going to be just digging into the ground.

So what good players do is I tend to stand up out of their posture, flip their hands, and try to save that shot to get into good impact kind of conditions there. So when you have this club steeper like that, it makes it very difficult to have consistency and to play your best golf. So what I would recommend doing after this is head on over to the move section of the Top Speed Golf System.

Go to the instruction tab, go to the top speed golf system, click on the move there and just a handful of videos I'm going to help you to get from the inside. Shallow it out, get it into the slot. I'm also going to help you to learn to square up that face so that everything has a nice tight draw.

You don't have to worry about leaving out to the right. So just do one video from there and I guarantee you you're going to start to see that nice tight draw pattern. You're not going to see those balls slice or that go real high and or weak. They're going to be compressed. They're going to be penetrating they're going to be really, really good.

So do one video. I challenge you to do one video today. Head on over there, watch one video, take a few notes on that, and then apply those principles to what we talked about here today. It's going to be the same thing for the driver and the iron, and it's going to make it to where you can shift your weight forward.

You can stay back. You can control whatever you want to do. It's all going to feel pretty drag on easy. So I'll see you on the move. Let's go ahead and get started right now.