Instruction
The three things that need to correlate for more driving distance
By now, each of you has heard that if you want to drive the ball farther you must increase your driver’s loft to increase carry distance. And I know what happened to most of you when you went out to the range the next time and tried it. You added loft, teed the ball higher, put the ball more forward in your stance and smacked that ball WAY up into the air expecting 50 more yards!
But what happened from this point forward is something you didn’t expect — the ball did indeed fly higher and it did carry a touch farther than before, but it landed dead with absolutely no roll. So even though you hit the ball higher, your overall distance output was lower than before. What gives?
What people tend to forget is that there are three things you must correlate in order to hit the ball farther:
- Impact point on the club face
- Dynamic loft at impact
- Descent angle upon landing
Impact Point
If you hit the ball on the incorrect portion of the face, you can decrease launch and increase spin. That causes the ball to continue to land with little forward momentum. For the best launch conditions, you MUST hit the ball above the center of the club. If you hit the ball low in the face, regardless if it’s a centered hit or not, you will decrease your launch angle and increase your spin rate.
Use Dr. Scholl’s Odor X spray to audit your impact point with your driver. This will help you to increase your launch without increasing your spin rate.
Low impact equals low launch and high spin
For increased launch with LOWER spin, you must hit the ball above the center-line of the driver. I know these hits are on the toe, but they were my first and second swings of the day!
Dynamic Loft
Most golfers have also heard that they must have “club-head lag” so they can hit the ball farther. If a golfer’s club head lags behind them and the shaft is forward leaning to the extreme, then they will turn a 10-degree driver into a 6-degree driver adding distance, they think. This is 100 percent untrue!
While golfers must have solid impact alignments and control of the club’s actual loft at impact, too much lag or too little lag is a bad thing. I would strive to create an impact when your left arm (for a right-handed golfer) and club shaft are in-line with one another the instant the ball leaves the club head for best results as it pertains to your dynamic loft at impact.
In efforts to create the proper dynamic loft at impact, control the “in-line” relationship between the club shaft and the left arm instantly after impact!
Descent Angle
Pay attention as this is the key to more roll upon landing. Yes, golfers must hit the ball higher into the air for more carry distance, but in order for the ball to roll out when it hits the ground golfers should have the ball landing at about a 40-to-45 degree angle so it has the ability to run along the ground when it lands. Sadly, when most people hit the ball higher they also increase their descent angle as well, and this causes the ball to land dead with no roll.
Flat shots with no height rely on ROLL for increased distance!
The key is to hit the ball higher coupled WITH a descent angle below 45 degrees for additional roll when the ball lands!
So what’s the solution?
I would highly recommend you find a club-fitter or teacher in your area with a Trackman or FlightScope who can correlate these three factors so you can hit the ball farther than ever before. It’s just hard to manage dynamic loft and descent angle without a launch monitor. Believe me, if you do this, you will thank me.
Read More Tom Stickney II : What Flightscope and Trackman can tell you (and me)
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Instruction
Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?
Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!
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Instruction
The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic
My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.
As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.
The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.
Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:
Mis-aligned hands
By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.
The position of the grip in the upper/left hand
I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.
To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.
Too much lower (right) hand on the club
It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.
Gripping too tightly
Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.
So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Instruction
Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!
Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?
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GolferX
Feb 6, 2014 at 7:18 pm
Tom, do your numbers work for sweepers? Because I tend to hit under the ball when I tee it high. I hit a 20 year old Big Bertha 10 degree, tried the newer 460’s larger head, don’t like them.
Tom Stickney
Feb 7, 2014 at 1:41 am
Hitting “under” the ball when it’s higher indicates a plane issue…tee it high and come in more shallow and you’ll be set!
Jim Benjamin
Feb 5, 2014 at 4:20 pm
What can a player do to learn to hit higher on the clubface to achieve the optimum strike? Is it just focus or is there a reliable method?
Chris Burke
Feb 5, 2014 at 2:01 pm
The big thing that affects distance is angle of attack. see BubbaWatson who has a different angle of attack then Charles Howell 3rd Bubba Watson can use a seven and a half degree driver .Where Charles Howell uses a 10 and a half 11
Tom Stickney
Feb 7, 2014 at 1:40 am
All depends on ball speed.
bryan
Feb 3, 2014 at 5:04 pm
I don’t get the descent angle comment. The angle of descent is an effect, not a cause. The cause is a combination of spin and speed.
No one can optimize their descent angle. The descent angle is optimized when people optimize their spin, launch angle, for their speed.
Am I crazy?
Tom Stickney
Feb 3, 2014 at 7:28 pm
You are mostly correct but impact point can alter your angle of descent as can the ball you play.
Ponjo
Feb 3, 2014 at 2:19 pm
Hi Tom. I recently seen a teacher for a lesson using my Nike Covert 10.5 degree driver. These are my figures based on your screen shots above from trackman.
Thoughts would be appreciated please
DL. H. C. T. LA
14.8. 49. 187. 228. 24.6
13.1. 46. 193. 235. 23.1
16.8. 64. 201. 234. 30.2
18.7. 78. 207. 234. 34.6
17.6. 65. 198. 233. 30.o
14.0. 52. 199. 237. 25.5
Tom Stickney
Feb 3, 2014 at 7:29 pm
Looks like the 18.7 one is best. What’s the spin rate on that shot?
mark
Feb 3, 2014 at 8:46 am
Two different clubs?
Tom Stickney
Feb 3, 2014 at 10:07 am
One
DK
Feb 2, 2014 at 10:23 pm
Tom,
For clarification: high launch isn’t the enemy, spin is. You can launch it high with spin at or below 2000 rpm and descent angle will be decently shallow…
Find yourself a very low spinning driver head and you’ve found a winner!
Xreb
Feb 3, 2014 at 7:50 am
Too low spin will result in the ball falling out of the sky reducing carry if you do not have sufficient club head speed. Blanket statements such as these tend to confuse people….
Tom Stickney
Feb 3, 2014 at 10:04 am
Agree, but we can’t discuss every nuance in a quick tip article.
Tom Stickney
Feb 3, 2014 at 10:07 am
How is high launch bad? Don’t understand your statement. There isn’t a low spinning head that can recover from a low hit in the face due to vertical gear effect. Sure these heads can help but vertical impact point is the key.
Sean
Feb 2, 2014 at 10:04 pm
I am just really impressed with your ability with your first 2 swings of the day to hit the ball on the face of the club to show 2 different shot shaps for the example’s that you did.
Golf Clap ))(( awsome
Tom Stickney
Feb 3, 2014 at 10:02 am
Thx. Slow motion swings do wonders. 🙂
Martin Chuck
Feb 2, 2014 at 8:56 pm
Tom, great job! Keep up good work.
Tom Stickney
Feb 3, 2014 at 10:01 am
Thx