Golf Drive, 5 Tips How to Hit Better Drives (Video) - by Pete Styles
Golf Drive, 5 Tips How to Hit Better Drives (Video) - by Pete Styles

So you have been practicing hard all week, you have been at the driving range or the practice ground, you have had your driving go and really nicely, you hit some great shots out in to the golf course, sorry out into the driving range. You just want to take those shots out to the golf course for the weekend. But you are feeling that the drive is going to let you down, and here is five really good tips, that will hopefully improve your driving on the golf course and on the driving range. First tip relates to the fact that sort of performance anxiety, you get up on the first tee, you feel like your friends and how the audience rather than your playing partners or your friends. You feel like, you all stood up there on the stage and the performance is driving the ball down the fairway and you start to get that performance anxiety.

Just make sure this only feels like one normal shot, just one shot that happens in every round in the golf, it doesn’t need to feel like a performance. Nobody knows that you have been in the driving range practicing all week and you are worried about this. This should just feel like a normal golf shot, so you pick out your target, you step behind the ball, you make your normal practice swing and you get up there and you drill it straight down the middle. And once that first tee shot is out of the way, at least the rest of the day will feel a lot more comfortable and a lot more relaxing. Now we are going to check on ball position, a lot of people, they practice a lot with the driver and might just get that ball position in slightly the wrong place. And that’s definitely going to affect the height of the shot and the direction of the shot. So we want to position the golfer with the driver, just inside of the front heel. So a really simple way, it’s just drop the club down and just measure that position there and I now know that, that’s going to be just inside my front instep. That will perform a nice sweeping angle of attack as I hit the ball up into the air and rise away as I go forwards. So if I have the ball too far back, it could hit the ball too low, too far forwards, they might struggle to contact it at all. The next thing is just to check that your equipment is suitable for you. We often see golfers who play with their driver with probably not enough loft on it, you know, the tall guys out on the turf, using 8, 9 degree drivers, a lot of people think, well, I will buy that, because that’s on the shelf, 8, 9 degrees is the same as Tiger Woods. In reality, most golfers I see, probably hit that driver too low, too low doesn’t give you the distance, also too low creates more curving spin that miss its fairway, slicing or drawing the ball too much. It will much better off using something like 11, 12 degree loft on your driver, so constantly getting fitted for your driver and make sure you have enough loft on your club to help you hit the fairways. One of the thing that would help you when you are out in the golf course, is when you are looking down the fairway, just make sure that you do notice where the fairway is and your Is don’t get always drawn to the hazards. So often, I play with golfers and maybe on a course I don’t know, I still say, so where do we go here. And they say, well, there is a bunker there, there is trees over there. There is water hazard over there and that’s our bounds and suddenly the fairway just doesn’t exist and it shrinks in my mind’s eye, I can’t see the fairway anymore. Make sure you are not doing that to yourself, make sure you are standing back behind the ball and saying there is the fairway, it’s nice and wide. I am aiming dead at the center and I am not going to focus on the hazards. Think about where you do want the ball to go, rather than where you don’t want it to finish. One last thing when you are out in the golf course playing is think about the risk and reward elements of driving. Is it worth using my driver, should I be using a more lofted club, is it worth trying to gamble and go over the bunker at 220 yards, or should I just aim over here for the bigger part and the safer part of the fairway. Don’t always take the gamble on, look at the defensive option, rather than always the aggressive option. Unless you are playing very confidently, play the higher percentage shot which is the center of the fairway, rather than the risky gambling approach. And I think if you incorporate those five pieces of advice, into your drive again, I am sure you will improve your driving and improve your scores. 2013-09-17

So you have been practicing hard all week, you have been at the driving range or the practice ground, you have had your driving go and really nicely, you hit some great shots out in to the golf course, sorry out into the driving range. You just want to take those shots out to the golf course for the weekend. But you are feeling that the drive is going to let you down, and here is five really good tips, that will hopefully improve your driving on the golf course and on the driving range. First tip relates to the fact that sort of performance anxiety, you get up on the first tee, you feel like your friends and how the audience rather than your playing partners or your friends. You feel like, you all stood up there on the stage and the performance is driving the ball down the fairway and you start to get that performance anxiety.

Just make sure this only feels like one normal shot, just one shot that happens in every round in the golf, it doesn’t need to feel like a performance. Nobody knows that you have been in the driving range practicing all week and you are worried about this. This should just feel like a normal golf shot, so you pick out your target, you step behind the ball, you make your normal practice swing and you get up there and you drill it straight down the middle. And once that first tee shot is out of the way, at least the rest of the day will feel a lot more comfortable and a lot more relaxing.

Now we are going to check on ball position, a lot of people, they practice a lot with the driver and might just get that ball position in slightly the wrong place. And that’s definitely going to affect the height of the shot and the direction of the shot. So we want to position the golfer with the driver, just inside of the front heel. So a really simple way, it’s just drop the club down and just measure that position there and I now know that, that’s going to be just inside my front instep. That will perform a nice sweeping angle of attack as I hit the ball up into the air and rise away as I go forwards. So if I have the ball too far back, it could hit the ball too low, too far forwards, they might struggle to contact it at all.

The next thing is just to check that your equipment is suitable for you. We often see golfers who play with their driver with probably not enough loft on it, you know, the tall guys out on the turf, using 8, 9 degree drivers, a lot of people think, well, I will buy that, because that’s on the shelf, 8, 9 degrees is the same as Tiger Woods. In reality, most golfers I see, probably hit that driver too low, too low doesn’t give you the distance, also too low creates more curving spin that miss its fairway, slicing or drawing the ball too much. It will much better off using something like 11, 12 degree loft on your driver, so constantly getting fitted for your driver and make sure you have enough loft on your club to help you hit the fairways.

One of the thing that would help you when you are out in the golf course, is when you are looking down the fairway, just make sure that you do notice where the fairway is and your Is don’t get always drawn to the hazards. So often, I play with golfers and maybe on a course I don’t know, I still say, so where do we go here. And they say, well, there is a bunker there, there is trees over there. There is water hazard over there and that’s our bounds and suddenly the fairway just doesn’t exist and it shrinks in my mind’s eye, I can’t see the fairway anymore. Make sure you are not doing that to yourself, make sure you are standing back behind the ball and saying there is the fairway, it’s nice and wide.

I am aiming dead at the center and I am not going to focus on the hazards. Think about where you do want the ball to go, rather than where you don’t want it to finish. One last thing when you are out in the golf course playing is think about the risk and reward elements of driving. Is it worth using my driver, should I be using a more lofted club, is it worth trying to gamble and go over the bunker at 220 yards, or should I just aim over here for the bigger part and the safer part of the fairway.

Don’t always take the gamble on, look at the defensive option, rather than always the aggressive option. Unless you are playing very confidently, play the higher percentage shot which is the center of the fairway, rather than the risky gambling approach. And I think if you incorporate those five pieces of advice, into your drive again, I am sure you will improve your driving and improve your scores.