Geoff Ogilvy Pro Golfer, Swing Sequence (Video) - by Pete Styles
Geoff Ogilvy Pro Golfer, Swing Sequence (Video) - by Pete Styles

There’s not many of the world’s best golfers that would admit to being scared of a particular shot, certainly not publicly. But Geoff Ogilvy is one of those guys that’s come out and said that at one point in his career he really wasn’t happy hitting the driver. He would do anything he could to avoid hitting drivers, certainly on narrow tight golf courses; he tried and hit a lot of three woods. He knew his good driver shot would was going to be fine, but he was sacred of quite a severe miss and it was a two way miss; he could miss it left and right which caused him problems.

So if that’s happening in your game, there is a couple of little key things that I’d like you to start to look at within your game and copy what Geoff Ogilvy did to make sure you are not scared of hitting the driver. Ogilvy worked really hard on good set up, good fundamentals and being consistent. He knew that with the driver, anything he did wrong was going to be magnified. So poor alignment, poor ball position, poor grip or poor posture would always cause the ball to curve more off line, more violently off line and give him that dreaded big two way miss, the severe bad shot.

The other thing he worked on was just shortening his golf swing down a little bit to create a little bit more control; so not having the golf club too far round, trust the fact that your driver will this the ball a long way. You don’t really need to stand there and smash it out there. It’s often a good feeling to swing your driver with the feeling like you’re swinging your three wood or with the feeling like you’re even swinging a seven iron. Just keep a nice smooth rhythmical short swing. And don’t just look at how good your good shots are when you are practicing, look at how bad your bad shots are.

So give yourself a target line, give yourself a fair way. Not just how close can you get to the centre of that fairway, but when you miss it, how badly are you missing it? If you’re hitting eight shots under the fairway, that’s fine, out of 10 let’s say. 8 shots under the fairway is brilliant. But if the two that miss are going to be lost golf balls, you can’t tear that drive round of the golf course without consistency. If you’re only hitting five onto the fairway, but the five that miss just missed on the periphery and would be on the semi rough on the golf course, then that’s playable.

So let’s not just always notice how good our good shots are, notice how bad your bad shots are and try to avoid being scared of the driver. We’re often as golfers; we’re guilty of practicing the things we’re good at and not practicing the things that we don’t like doing. So like Geoff Ogilvy, get the driver in your hands, make a few little changes and tweaks to your golf swing and focus on making that miss a little bit better.

[playerProfile url="https://golf-info-guide.com/pga-players/geoff-ogilvy/"][/playerProfile] 2013-07-02

There’s not many of the world’s best golfers that would admit to being scared of a particular shot, certainly not publicly. But Geoff Ogilvy is one of those guys that’s come out and said that at one point in his career he really wasn’t happy hitting the driver. He would do anything he could to avoid hitting drivers, certainly on narrow tight golf courses; he tried and hit a lot of three woods. He knew his good driver shot would was going to be fine, but he was sacred of quite a severe miss and it was a two way miss; he could miss it left and right which caused him problems.

So if that’s happening in your game, there is a couple of little key things that I’d like you to start to look at within your game and copy what Geoff Ogilvy did to make sure you are not scared of hitting the driver. Ogilvy worked really hard on good set up, good fundamentals and being consistent. He knew that with the driver, anything he did wrong was going to be magnified. So poor alignment, poor ball position, poor grip or poor posture would always cause the ball to curve more off line, more violently off line and give him that dreaded big two way miss, the severe bad shot.

The other thing he worked on was just shortening his golf swing down a little bit to create a little bit more control; so not having the golf club too far round, trust the fact that your driver will this the ball a long way. You don’t really need to stand there and smash it out there. It’s often a good feeling to swing your driver with the feeling like you’re swinging your three wood or with the feeling like you’re even swinging a seven iron. Just keep a nice smooth rhythmical short swing. And don’t just look at how good your good shots are when you are practicing, look at how bad your bad shots are.

So give yourself a target line, give yourself a fair way. Not just how close can you get to the centre of that fairway, but when you miss it, how badly are you missing it? If you’re hitting eight shots under the fairway, that’s fine, out of 10 let’s say. 8 shots under the fairway is brilliant. But if the two that miss are going to be lost golf balls, you can’t tear that drive round of the golf course without consistency. If you’re only hitting five onto the fairway, but the five that miss just missed on the periphery and would be on the semi rough on the golf course, then that’s playable.

So let’s not just always notice how good our good shots are, notice how bad your bad shots are and try to avoid being scared of the driver. We’re often as golfers; we’re guilty of practicing the things we’re good at and not practicing the things that we don’t like doing. So like Geoff Ogilvy, get the driver in your hands, make a few little changes and tweaks to your golf swing and focus on making that miss a little bit better.

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