Instruction
Want to hit longer drives? Focus on trajectory
“I need more distance!” golfers always tell me.
Sadly, with golf courses getting longer and agronomy improving, gone are the days of golf courses with fairways that play firm and fast. Players prefer to see lush green grass, which requires a high density of grass and a lot of water. That makes firm conditions a rarity.
These changes have made it very important for average golfers to increase their distance off the tee. The issue now becomes choosing between carry and roll.
In order to achieve more distance, should golfers:
- Carry the ball farther?
- Hit drives with a more penetrating trajectory that will roll out more?
Let’s look at two drives I hit on Trackman — one low-launching, and one high-launching drive.
Low Shot
- Height: 46 feet
- Carry: 179.7 yards
- Total Distance: 218.7 yards
- Swing Speed: 92.9 mph
High Shot
- Height: 98 feet
- Carry: 205.3 yards
- Total Distance: 220.2 yards
- Swing Speed: 91.4 yards
For the low shot, I swung the club 92.9 mph. For the higher shot, I actually swung slower (91.4 mph), but I carried the shot 25.6 yards farther. Notice, however, that both shots rolled out to nearly the same distance — roughly 220 yards. Those total distance results are from Trackman, which simulates roll on a PGA Tour fairway.
Most of us don’t play on PGA Tour fairways; our course conditions change from day to day. If that describes you, here are three things for to remember about driver trajectory.
- Higher ball flights are best when you wants to CARRY the ball as far as possible.
- Medium ball flights are best when you want to carry the ball farther, but still have it roll out nicely.
- Low ball flights are never the best option in softer conditions, as they tend to land well short of higher-flying drive and stop quicker.
From my experience, most average players tend to hit the ball TOO LOW, relying on roll to make up for their lack of carry.
Lower ball flights are OK when the conditions are faster, the wind is blowing, or you have a tendency to spin the ball too much with the driver. Most of the time, however, a higher ball flight will provide the best results.
If you want to carry the ball farther, and most golfers do, you MUST contact the ball in the high center of the club face with your driver. If you don’t, your drives will spin too much and that will reduce carry distance.
By contacting your drives high on the face, you are using what is called “Gear Effect” to your advantage. On shots hit above the a club’s sweet spot, gear effect causes the ball to launch higher and with less spin, one of the main keys to hitting longer drives.
I encourage you to experiment with various trajectories until you find the one’e that optimal for the course conditions you play most often.
More from Tom Stickney: How a cure for athlete’s foot can lead to longer drives.
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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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Instruction
How a towel can fix your golf swing
This is a classic drill that has been used for decades. However, the world of marketed training aids has grown so much during that time that this simple practice has been virtually forgotten. Because why teach people how to play golf using everyday items when you can create and sell a product that reinforces the same thing? Nevertheless, I am here to give you helpful advice without running to the nearest Edwin Watts or adding something to your Amazon cart.
For the “scoring clubs,” having a solid connection between the arms and body during the swing, especially through impact, is paramount to creating long-lasting consistency. And keeping that connection throughout the swing helps rotate the shoulders more to generate more power to help you hit it farther. So, how does this drill work, and what will your game benefit from it? Well, let’s get into it.
Setup
You can use this for basic chip shots up to complete swings. I use this with every club in my bag, up to a 9 or 8-iron. It’s natural to create incrementally more separation between the arms and body as you progress up the set. So doing this with a high iron or a wood is not recommended.
While you set up to hit a ball, simply tuck the towel underneath both armpits. The length of the towel will determine how tight it will be across your chest but don’t make it so loose that it gets in the way of your vision. After both sides are tucked, make some focused swings, keeping both arms firmly connected to the body during the backswing and follow through. (Note: It’s normal to lose connection on your lead arm during your finishing pose.) When you’re ready, put a ball in the way of those swings and get to work.
Get a Better Shoulder Turn
Many of us struggle to have proper shoulder rotation in our golf swing, especially during long layoffs. Making a swing that is all arms and no shoulders is a surefire way to have less control with wedges and less distance with full swings. Notice how I can get in a similar-looking position in both 60° wedge photos. However, one is weak and uncontrollable, while the other is strong and connected. One allows me to use my larger muscles to create my swing, and one doesn’t. The follow-through is another critical point where having a good connection, as well as solid shoulder rotation, is a must. This drill is great for those who tend to have a “chicken wing” form in their lead arm, which happens when it becomes separated from the body through impact.
In full swings, getting your shoulders to rotate in your golf swing is a great way to reinforce proper weight distribution. If your swing is all arms, it’s much harder to get your weight to naturally shift to the inside part of your trail foot in the backswing. Sure, you could make the mistake of “sliding” to get weight on your back foot, but that doesn’t fix the issue. You must turn into your trial leg to generate power. Additionally, look at the difference in separation between my hands and my head in the 8-iron examples. The green picture has more separation and has my hands lower. This will help me lessen my angle of attack and make it easier to hit the inside part of the golf ball, rather than the over-the-top move that the other picture produces.
Stay Better Connected in the Backswing
When you don’t keep everything in your upper body working as one, getting to a good spot at the top of your swing is very hard to do. It would take impeccable timing along with great hand-eye coordination to hit quality shots with any sort of regularity if the arms are working separately from the body.
Notice in the red pictures of both my 60-degree wedge and 8-iron how high my hands are and the fact you can clearly see my shoulder through the gap in my arms. That has happened because the right arm, just above my elbow, has become totally disconnected from my body. That separation causes me to lift my hands as well as lose some of the extension in my left arm. This has been corrected in the green pictures by using this drill to reinforce that connection. It will also make you focus on keeping the lead arm close to your body as well. Because the moment either one loses that relationship, the towel falls.
Conclusion
I have been diligent this year in finding a few drills that target some of the issues that plague my golf game; either by simply forgetting fundamental things or by coming to terms with the faults that have bitten me my whole career. I have found that having a few drills to fall back on to reinforce certain feelings helps me find my game a little easier, and the “towel drill” is most definitely one of them.
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Max
Mar 26, 2015 at 1:40 pm
I try to tee the ball high and put it forward in the stance to get an upward AOA. Problem is, this makes it easier for me to hit low on the face as I tend to hang back. Was wondering which had a bigger impact on numbers, AOA or impact? Should I worry less about positive AOA and focus more on impacting a little higher on the face?
mikee
Mar 21, 2015 at 8:19 pm
I am such a hacker I can’t hit a driver…..but I hit my Ping Rapture 2 wood pretty well…???same ball location on the face goes for this or Taylormade Aeroburner Minidriver ??
dcorun
Mar 19, 2015 at 2:03 pm
I hit my drives with a mid-high launch because I lived in Maryland all my life before retiring to Georgia. Here in Georgia, the base of the fairway is red clay and you get a ton of rollout whether you hit high or low especially when the fairways are dry. It also helps that you don’t need to over water Bermuda like you do Bent grass.
Tom Stickney
Mar 19, 2015 at 2:11 am
Zara– hit it higher on the face.
Zra
Mar 17, 2015 at 6:46 pm
If i hit the ball to high, like sometimes i got very little roll or even plugged ball, would you recommend me to loft it down or tee it lower?
tom stickney
Mar 17, 2015 at 1:50 pm
From the studies I have read, TM advocates that practice into the wind…I personally have not done any testing on that fact but if they say so, I would believe it in theory.
Chomper
Mar 17, 2015 at 12:58 pm
Great read. I have tried to strive to get to that point on the club face consistently but tend to hit it a little lower on the club face.
I tend to be a high ball hitter anyway, with your studies on trackman, would you recommend trying to hit the hall high center on the clubface going into the wind? Yes it will be high launching, but will have lower spin. Am I right in my assumption that higher spin would be more damaging than high launching when hitting into the wind?