Instruction

Maximize your driver distance, but maintain consistency

Published

11 years ago

Jul 5, 2013

Instructors and launch monitor experts are promising golfers extra yards if they can execute an angle of attack (AoA) that is positive, or up at impact.

I believe that hitting up on the driver can benefit most club players. Launch monitors like Trackman and Flightscope have been very valuable tools in my teaching, and one of the things that they’ve shown me is just how much golfers hit down on the ball with their drivers. Some are more down with their drivers than with their 7 irons!

So what are the benefits of hitting up on the ball with the driver? Solid contact is one, and hitting it farther is another. When golfers hit down on the ball with a driver, a few things can happen:

Contact can be too high on the face (where there is more loft on the club), which will result in slower ball speeds and shots that actually launch too high.
If contact is in the middle or on the bottom of the face, the launch will be too low, which it will cost golfers carry yards.

So what is the ideal AoA number? According to the TrackMan Optimization Chart, if a golfer’s AoA is 5 degrees down and their swing speed is 105 mph, their potential carry distance is 260 yards. But if golfers change their AoA to a positive 5 degrees, they can increase their carry distance to 288 yards. That is a significant difference just based on changing AoA.

So if TrackMan recommends a positive angle of attack, then why is it that the PGA Tour average AoA is 1 degree down? The answer is simple; it’s because of geometry.

A change in angle of attack also alters a golfers club path. For example, the more a golfer hits up on the ball, the more his or her club path becomes out to in. And the more a golfer hits down on the ball, his or her path becomes in to out.

So if a golfer’s swing direction (the direction the club is moving toward the ball) is zero, or down the target line, but he or she hits up on the golf ball 5 degrees, the club path becomes out-to-in 5 degrees. That means if that golfer’s club face is square to the target line, the ball will start on the target and then fade. So even though the golfer was potentially increasing distance by hitting up on the ball, he or she may not be as consistent.

I recommend an angle of attack that is between 3 degrees up to even 1 degree down depending on the player. The reason I look for an angle of attack of positive 3 degrees to negative 1 degree is because it allows golfers to maximize their distance by hitting up on the ball without losing consistency. If a golfer has an angle of attack of positive 4 or more, he or she has to shift the base line alignment, or swing more in to out to compensate for the AoA.

A great drill for golfers to start to hit slightly up on the ball is to move their ball position more forward in their stance and tee the ball higher. The goal is to clip the top part of the tee and make a solid strike on the ball. If they cut the tee in half from that position, they are pretty close to level to the ground or slightly up. This is a good starting point to begin hitting up on the ball and still maintain consistency to hit more fairways.

I know we all have heard that “high launch, low spin” will create maximum distance, and the best way to achieve those launch conditions is to hit up on the ball. And that may be correct. But if a golfer cannot control his or her accuracy, then distance doesn’t really matter. Golfers can maximize their distance with an attack angle of 3 degrees up and maintain consistency by not altering their club path too much to be a great driver of the golf ball.

I think it’s clear to say Tour players can hit down on their drivers because they have enough club head and ball speed to generate sufficient distance to play the courses they do, but the average golfers can benefit from a positive attack angle, just as long as it is within the recommended window.

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Instruction

Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?

Published

1 week ago

Apr 24, 2024

Shawn Clement

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

Published

1 month ago

Mar 29, 2024

Terry Koehler

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.

Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!

Published

2 months ago

Mar 4, 2024

Shawn Clement

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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