As we age, the driver gets harder to hit well. Up to my early 60’s, I hit my driver great. It went high and straight. And far enough to get me into single digits.

But now I’m in my mid-70’s. It’s gotten harder to hit a drive up in the air, and trying to launch it just makes things worse.

So I had a little chat with my ego and swapped my driver for a 12.5* fairway wood (Titleist 975F). Now I hit the ball high and straight again, and just as far all the time as the occasional times when I can nail my driver.

They say recreational golfers shouldn’t trade their driver for a fairway wood because if they can’t hit their driver straight, they can’t hit a fairway wood straight, either. That is advice to consider if you’re in the in the prime of your life.

But if you are a senior golfer, and I mean senior senior, there was the game you once played, and there is the game you play now. It’s a different game. Adjust and Make Golf Fun Again.

I know, I know. This is the 238th post/video/article you have read that promises you more distance with one magic move. You will go instantly from hitting your driver 200 to 260.

I won’t promise you that much, but I do promise you extra distance that will be worth your while to have. And all you need to do is make one tiny adjustment when you start your forward swing, and anybody can do it.

The first move you make when you start your forward swing is a sliding turn of your left hip (right hip, for lefties). Get that hip moving.

What probably happens when you do that is that your torso starts turning, too, and your arms and the club get carried with it. Everything starts moving at the same time. That’s what we have to fix.

When you turn your hip, keep your torso where it is until you have to turn it. Have the feeling, as Bobby Jones said, of leaving the club at the top.

Then, when your torso has to begin turning, the club will have less time to get back to the ball, because of the delay in getting it started. So it has to go faster. There’s no other choice.

That’s where the extra distance comes in. The extra clubhead speed, creates more distance.

And the great thing about it is that you don’t have to rush or swing harder or do anything like that. The speed creates itself, as long as you stay relaxed.

Try it. Swing a driver like you normally do. Then swing again with this delaying move. The second time, you will hear the clubhead create a higher-pitched sound when it goes through the hitting area than before. That’s the sign that it’s moving faster.

It will take a while to get this built into your swing, but it’s not hard to do. It just takes repetition to learn how to get it just right.

Most of us know to align our setup on the tee by picking out something on the ground a few feet in front of your ball that is on the ball-to-target line.

You find a nice place to stand, put the ball and tee in the ground, then step back and find that spot.

Wrong.

Find the spot first. Then put the tee in the ground on the target-to-spot line extended. If you try this, I’ll think you will get a surer feeling of being aligned when you take your stance.

The driver should be an easy club to hit. The ball sits up on a tee and the clubface is huge. You’re almost standing upright when you swing.

Yet it’s the club golfers have the least success with. Here’s how to change that.

Take a driver and a 9-iron to the range. Warm up with the 9. When you’re hitting them well, one after the other, put it down and pick up your driver. Swing your driver with a little bit of 9-iron in it.

After a few of those, go back to the 9-iron and put a bit of driver into it.

Keep going back and forth, bringing one club into the other, until you are using the same swing for both clubs.

That’s how you practice your driver. It’s the same swing as your 9-iron, just with you standing more upright.

BTW, all your other clubs are like that, too.

This is one of those little things that could make a big difference by getting it right and getting it the same very time.

They say the ball should be teed up for a driver so the center of the ball is even with the top of the driver’s clubface. You know I question everything, but I’ll let that one go.

Measure the height of your clubface. Mine is 2 inches on the nose (Titleist 983K).

(I know about the post I put up last year about Tiger’s driver and my driver, both Titliest 975D, but I switched. So did Tiger. Anyway…)

Subtract from that half the diameter of the ball (half of 1.68 inches is 0.84 inches). I get 1.16 inches.

That is the height of the tee ABOVE THE GROUND for my driver.

Get a tee and draw a line around the shaft with a Sharpie that is 1.16 inches (or whatever you get) from the TOP of the tee.

Push the tee into the ground as far as the line, with a golf ball on top of it, and address the ball with your driver. That is what a properly teed-up ball should look like with your driver.

Now. How do you tee it up at the same height every time without drawing lines around all your tees? Simple!

With your trial ball and tee still in the ground, put your hand on the ball so the top of it lies in the junction between your thumb and the base of your forefinger, with your thumb sticking straight down.

Notice where the tip of your thumb is in relation to the ground. THAT is how you are going to tell that you have the right tee height.

I know, this sounds really obsessive. But it’s a detail that is easy to pay attention to, which accords with a major principle of playing golf:

The more things you can do the right way every time, the easier the game gets and the better you play it.

You know the drives you hit dead straight but way up in the air and if you get 50 yards you’re lucky? That’s skying the ball. Maddening. There are three main causes for this.

First, and hopefully most obvious, is that you’re teeng the ball too high. The middle of the ball, as it sits on the tee, should meet the top of the driver head. This guideline has been around for years, because it works.

The other two causes are more involved. They are meant to correct the cause of the popup, which is the clubhead coming into the ball on a downward trajectory. You want the clubhead to be arcing upward a few degrees at impact.

One is that you are swaying toward the target during your forward swing. That moves the low point of your swing in that direction, which means the clubhead will still be travelling downward when it meets the ball, sending it up excessively.

At address, lean your torso toward the trailing side of your body by a few degrees, and keep it there. In the forward swing, think “stay back” so you don’t straighten up your posture.

The second reason is you take the club back too steeply. Your forward swing will follow this trajectory into the ball, and again, the clubhead comes into the ball at too steep an angle.

It’s easy to say there is one swing for your driver, hybrids, and irons. And that’s right. One swing is hard enough to get right, and one swing works.

But getting that one swing doesn’t solve your problems because you have to be able to use that swing on all your swinging clubs (I’m excepting your wedges and the putter.)

The club that is hardest to apply this concept to is the driver. It’s longer, it’s lighter, the swing is flatter, and you’re standing farther away from the ball. The 6-iron feeling, for example, just isn’t there.

The key to any swing, but especially the driver swing, is that in the forward swing, the body turn and the arm swing must be coordinated. They don’t each do their own thing and hope it all comes out good in the end.

What I have found works so well is the feeling that the hip/body turn carries the unmoving upper body assembly at the start of the forward swing.

As the turn continues, upper body momentum builds up, and a graceful and flowing release of the arms that times itself occurs, to swing the club through the ball without any effort of your own.

All this feels like one continuous movement. No parts, just one long, flowing movement. Watch the pros on TV swing their driver to see what I mean.

Practice your driver by creating this feeling as you swing it through the air (no swinging at golf balls). Over and over. Every swing feels this way; they are all identical.

Try that and see what you get.

For a while now, longer than I want to admit, I have been suffering from driver depression. You know, you’re bummed out because you can’t hit this thing to save your life?

At one time it was my best friend and as straight as any club in the bag. Now? One duck hook after another.

I thought it was several things, which I won’t go into, because none of them were the reason.

But there is this book I have, titled Golf Doctor*, by the legendary British teacher, John Jacobs. He presents 25 “lessons,” each of which is a description of a particular (poor) ball flight, why it’s happening, and what to do about it.

And it’s not just, do you slice or do you hook. It gets much more detailed than that.

This is the one that described me:

“Lesson 7: Shots with all the clubs start out on target but curve to the left thereafter. Shots with all clubs fly lower than normal. Your driver, the least-lofted club, is practically unplayable.”

That’s me, especially the last. And you know what? It was all in the grip.

The first correction was to see if the grip is turned too far to the right. Too strong. Yes, my right hand had drifted over that too far to the right. I should be placing my right hand so the V made by the thumb and hand is nearly centered on the handle (see photo).



But that wasn’t all. He suggested a very fine point. At address, the pocket formed by the right hand rests firmly on top of the left thumb. If this pressure releases during the backswing, the right hand is free to get active and overpower the left hand through impact, closing the clubface.

That was my biggest problem. My right hand was separating itself from the left. There was a big gap between them by the time my backswing was finished.

When I was young, books talked about putting a blade of grass between the right hand and left thumb, and not letting it fall out when swinging the club. I don’t see that pointer too much anymore, though Tom Kite’s method book has it. There’s a picture of it in Jacobs’ book about five pages later where he uses that concept to fix something else.

So that’s it. Two things to work on. So I worked on them at home. When the winter weather cleared, I went to the range to try it out.

No luck. Same as before. But with two balls left in the bucket I realized I had gone back to my old habit and my hands were coming apart. More practice at home.

A few weeks later, and another trip to the range. This time I had “hands together” down pat.

Driver. I haven’t hit it that well in years. LOUD sound. Square in the center. Ball launching off the clubface, up in the air, straight down the “fairway” a long way. Again and again.

I’m happy now. No more driver depression.

You might look into getting a copy of this book.

* Also published as Quick Cures for Weekend Golfers.