Category Archives: driver

Nine Clubs, One Swing

There’s a piece of swing advice that goes something like this: “13 clubs, one swing.” We’re excluding the putter, of course. But every other club is swung the same way.

There is disagreement about this, but a lot of it is nit-picky.

Of course a driver swing will be different from a 9-iron swing because you stand farther away from the ball with a driver so it is a flatter swing. And the attack angle is accordingly different. Etc.

But what is the same is that the driver swing is just a 9-iron swing with you standing a bit more upright and you holding a different club. None of your swing principles change.

Don’t take my word for it, though. See this video for another golfer’s opinion that you swing all the clubs the same way.

There is one way in which I disagree with the 13 clubs part, though. You DO NOT pitch with your wedges using the same swing you do for long shots. The pitching swing is not just a shorter version of the full swing.

See this post for what I mean.

So if you have a putter and four wedges, I would say, roughly, the saying should be “9 clubs, one swing.” You can pick around the edges but you know what I’m getting at.

This is an effective way to go, and it makes the game so much simpler to play.

Get your tee height right

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.

Skying My Driver – How I Stopped It

You know the drives you hit dead straight but way up in the air and if you get 100 yards you’re lucky? That’s skying the ball. Maddening. I used to do that out of nowhere. Here’s how I stopped it for good. There are two main causes for this and I was doing both of them.

Elsewhere I have talked about the suspension point. It’s the big bone at the base of your neck around which the swing turns. This point cannot move during the swing, either sideways, up or down, and front to back.

During the forward swing, when you move that point toward the target in the direction the forward swing is flowing, you shift the entire swing circle forward. The low point of the swing is now forward of where it was at address.

You want the clubhead to be traveling upward when it hits the ball on a drive. When you shift your suspension point forward, that puts the low point of the swing in front of the ball. The clubhead will now still be traveling downward when it meets the ball, getting under it, and sending it way up in the air.

Just do that one thing, keep the suspension point where it is, and you should be fine. If you are used to moving it forward, keeping it in place will feel like a dramatic alteration of your swing. So be it.

The second reason is you take the club back too steeply. This causes you to bring the club into the ball at a downward angle, and up pops the ball. Try taking the club almost all the way back, stop your swing and take a look. If the shaft is pointing close to straight in the air, there’s the proof.

The cure is to flatten your swing plane by imagining you take the club back on the plane defined by your clubshaft. That’s not the plane you swing on if you do this, but it is a structured way to lower the swing plane to a better place.

Both of these mistakes can also cause you hit your irons fat, too.

A Coordinated Driver Swing

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.

No More Driver Depression

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.

Me and Tiger

GolfWRX published an article today on the driver Tiger Woods used when he won the Tiger Slam in 2000. It’s a Titleist 975D.

It just so happens that is the same driver I use, even now.

Tiger (actual club)
Me (actual club)

I hit fairways with it and it feels real good in my hands. It doesn’t go 298 yards, though. I must be doing something wrong.

Maybe it’s that my driver is 12.5* and not 6.5*. Maybe it’s that I have never hit it past 250 and have no idea how I hit it even that far. Once.

But I don’t care. Me and Tiger. We know a good driver when we see one.

The Right Way to Use Your Driver

I think the biggest problem we have with the driver is that we think of it as a distance club. Yes it’s the longest club, but it is not a club of unlimited length. It, like all the other clubs, is meant to hit the ball a certain distance.

We get the most out of our driver if we think of it instead as a positional club. Our task is to hit the ball off the tee to a place in the fairway that makes our shot to the green as easy as possible.

Consider every other club. If we want to make a six-foot putt, the direction has to be highly accurate. If we chip from off the green, we’re aiming at the hole.

When we pitch from 70 yards, we’re aiming at the hole.

When we hit an iron into the green, we’re aiming at something, maybe the pin, or somewhere more towards the center.

Why would it be different with the driver?

There’s a famous story about Ben Hogan at Carnoustie hitting his ball into a tiny space between a mid-fairway bunker and out-of-bounds because that spot gave him the best look at the green for his second shot.

It’s a shot that few people dare to try. But he did, because that’s how he used his driver―for position.

I know this is asking a lot. Turning your driver into a positional club is not easy to do. But start practicing with it that way. When you’re at the range, pick a specific spot and try to get the ball to that spot with your driver just like you would with a six-iron.

You might have to change how you hit your driver, but if you do, it’s going to be a change for the better.

In the end, you might not be able to land the ball in the divot you made yesterday, but if you can hit the ball to the right side, or the left side, or the center of the fairway at will, boy, those pars are going to start adding up.

Because the origin of pars (and birdies) is the tee, not the fairway, or around the green.

How To Hit Your Driver

When my first book, Better Recreational Golf“>Better Recreational Golf, came out, I had a publication party at a local book store, complete with books for me to sell and sign, and refreshments. It was really cool.

This was in 2009, and the name of the store was Tea Party Books.

The next year the Tea Party Republicans got elected to Congress and the book store got nationwide attention, but for reasons the owner had to spend a lot of time deflecting.

Anyway, I put up posters all over the area in golf course pro shops and sporting goods stores and so forth.

The only people who showed up, though, were family, a few friends, and my editor.

Well, I gave my spiel anyway, even though there were maybe three golfers in the room including me. When I was finished I asked if there were any questions.

My brother-in-law, who tries his hardest, asked me how to hit his driver. So I answered with a bunch of technical stuff that was in the book.

That was thirteen years ago. What I should have said was this:

Start hitting 7-irons. Hit lots of 7-irons. Get really good at hitting 7-irons.

Because if you can’t hit a 7-iron, why are you trying to hit a driver?

Ten More Yards with your driver

Everybody knows by now that the faster your clubhead is moving when it hits the ball, the farther the ball will go. F=ma, after all.

If you poke around the Internet you will find that in the range of swing speeds you now have, 1 more MPH will give you about 3 more yards of carry. So if you can get 3 more MPH, you’ll get almost 10 yards more carry.

So why don’t you just swing a little harder and get the extra speed? Well, it’s not that easy.

You’re probably already getting the highest swing speed you can get right now. Everyone has a limit, you know. And then trying harder means, for most people, putting out more effort, which usually ends up lowering your swing speed because of the extra tension you put into the harder swing.

And that, folks, is the key to getting those 3 MPH.

(Right now I feel like the coach in Chariots of Fire who told Harold Abrahams he needs three more yards and he can show Abrahams how to get them.)

If tension slows you down, the opposite of tension, relaxation speeds you up. What we’re going to relax are your arms, the parts of your body that do the actual swinging.

Stand up in your address position, but without a club in your hands. Let your arms hang down and swing them gently from side to side.

Notice how free and easy it is, and how all the movement is in the shoulder joint. The joint itself does not move.

Now stand up and swing both arms up and over your head, and let them fall straight down again so they swing behind you, just as if you were in a large stadium doing the Wave.

Just go back and forth, swinging freely, feeling as before all the movement in the joint but not of the joint.

Now ask yourself, do my arms feel like this when I swing a golf club? Especially in the forward swing?

I would bet they don’t. But if they did, those relaxed arms would swing faster perforce, and there you would have the extra speed you want.

How much more? I don’t know exactly, but there will be more. To put this technique into practice you have to trust that a relaxed swinging motion will send the ball farther away than a muscular hit will.

Which is true.