3 Things You Must Do To Be a Great Driver   

We all know the most seductive part of the game of golf. We all want to be able to step up on the tee and really smoke that sucker. The sound and sight of a well struck ball is very visceral. You feel it deep within you. Hit two or three good tee shots in a row and it starts to become almost mystical.

If you are not getting that experience, you deserve to. You certainly get no pleasing auditory or sensory feedback if you are pushing or slicing the ball weakly off the club. And there is no joy to be derived from hitting a smothered hook shot into the rough.

This is important. You must know and feel what a well struck golf shot feels like. Surprisingly, many golfers haven’t a clue what this is like. You have to be able to at least hit a solid chip or pitch shot which compresses the ball. You absolutely must compress it, not pick it. Remember this as I will return to it later.

If you want to know what a powerful pro level swing is like, go here 

First I want to give you those 3 things that will separate .

you from being a pretender to being a performer. Here they are:

▸ The driver must match your swing

▸ Think Solid, speed kills

▸ Avoid “golf tips” like the plague

Let’s go over each of these one by one. The first one is like Alcoholics Anonymous. Stand up and take the pledge. Repeat after me: “Yes, I get sucked in yearly to the siren song of the next big thing”. What are we up to now: the R99, the G747 or the F16 (and don’t forget the turbo model)?

Here’s the skinny. If the shaft is too long, too stiff or too soft for you, forget the 27 yards more that the manufacturers are promising. Most players have no idea what they should be using in a driver. The club has to match your swing speed and launch angle. Do yourself a favor, go to a real club maker and get tested and keep the specs taped to your golf bag. You will be surprised what a difference the right club will make to your game.

The next element of being long and straight is crucial. Unless you hit the ball solidly, you don’t have a hope in hell of getting the distance you are seeking. Let me demystify something for you here and now. Do not get suckered into trying to create club head speed at the expense of learning to make solid contact. The golf sales copy for drivers in recent years beat the club head speed thing to death. You will notice now that they have shifted to “ball speed’ and “launch angle” off the club.

The pitfall with speed is it means nothing but misery if you cannot put a solid strike on the ball. BIG TIP TIME: you must learn to hit it solidly first, BEFORE you fool around with your club head speed. Most amateurs try to generate greater club speed with their arms. If you do this, you will actually slow the club down and most likely haul it out of plane. You do not want to do that.

Try this test. Take a modestly slow, half swing on the range with a goal of simply hitting it in the middle of the face of your driver. If you can put your ego aside you will discover that a ball hit solidly like this will go straight (a good thing) and it will go just as far as you are now hitting it. The bonus you will discover is that a ball hit solidly like this will go further both into the wind and into a cross wind.

The final tip is stay away from tips. Let me pull back the curtain. The steady torrent of golf tips you are reading contradict one another. You will do yourself great psychic harm trying to incorporate them into your game. You absolutely must know what swing method you are committed to and practice the elements of that swing. The biggest BS comes from a teacher who says that they are “taking your existing swing” and just refining or modifying it. If they say that, they don’t have a clue what they are doing. Get out of there as fast as you can.

  When people ask me, I recommend this guy, see for yourself.

Never be bashful about asking any teacher who their former/current students are and can you contact them. If there are no success stories here, shop elsewhere. And it does not have to take 7 years to become a competent player.