Hit with a rising club head for longer drives, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Hit with a rising club head for longer drives, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles I think every golfer that plays the game currently wants to hit the ball a little bit further, a little bit harder so here's a good tip to try and maximize the distance that you get with your current swing. And really with the advancements of launch monitors and better driver technology and things like that, this tip is now more and more relevant than it ever has been. And it's how we sweep the ball away and fill our hitting up with the driver. I've set my ball up here in a nice high tee peg, taking my driver, and drop the alignment stick here just opposite my left instep for the right-handed golfer. So I've got the ball pretty much as far forward as I can have it within the width of my stance. I don’t really like to see the ball outside the left foot; I think that can be considered a bit too far forward. So just on the left instep of the front leg there is good. And then have the shaft of the golf club just slightly leaning back so it points just inside my left hip position. One thing you got to be careful with when you put the ball forwards like this is that you don’t then take your body forward to that position. I sometimes see that with golfers because they're used to having the ball pretty much under the center of their body, and occasionally having the hands forwards of the ball. When we have the driver position, we don’t want to try and mimic the same position. Let the ball stay forwards, let your body weight stay back, maybe even add a little bit more body weight to your right leg, sort of 60% here, 40% here. That should then encourage you to hit slightly more up underneath the golf ball and catch it on the rise. The rising blow that launches the ball higher gives it what we talked about as a rainbow flight where it arcs up and comes down slowly rather than starting too low and back spinning into the air which is more of a stalling flight. We don’t really like that anymore, sort of an arcing, rainbow flight. Having it by the front leg, launch it higher, a little bit less spin, more height, more carry. And it's the most efficient way of hitting the golf ball so you have the ball nicely forwards against your front leg, you're body weight can stay back, left shoulder can be nice and high, sweep the club across the floor on the way back, and that really sets the path for how you're going to bring the club down to the ball. We don't want to be lifting the golf club up like we do with the wedge and slamming back down on the ball, sweeping it nicely away coming back, big turn to the top, stay behind it. The bottom of the arc of the swing would actually be before the ball, then rising up. And that bottom of the arc, before the ball is a fairly new neat thing to the driver, you can't do that with an iron because you'd hit the ground before the ball and hit the ball fat. So here it bottoms out, it rises up through the shot, and you have a nice, big tall finish, hopefully just like this one. 2013-01-15

I think every golfer that plays the game currently wants to hit the ball a little bit further, a little bit harder so here's a good tip to try and maximize the distance that you get with your current swing. And really with the advancements of launch monitors and better driver technology and things like that, this tip is now more and more relevant than it ever has been. And it's how we sweep the ball away and fill our hitting up with the driver.

I've set my ball up here in a nice high tee peg, taking my driver, and drop the alignment stick here just opposite my left instep for the right-handed golfer. So I've got the ball pretty much as far forward as I can have it within the width of my stance. I don’t really like to see the ball outside the left foot; I think that can be considered a bit too far forward. So just on the left instep of the front leg there is good. And then have the shaft of the golf club just slightly leaning back so it points just inside my left hip position. One thing you got to be careful with when you put the ball forwards like this is that you don’t then take your body forward to that position. I sometimes see that with golfers because they're used to having the ball pretty much under the center of their body, and occasionally having the hands forwards of the ball.
When we have the driver position, we don’t want to try and mimic the same position. Let the ball stay forwards, let your body weight stay back, maybe even add a little bit more body weight to your right leg, sort of 60% here, 40% here. That should then encourage you to hit slightly more up underneath the golf ball and catch it on the rise. The rising blow that launches the ball higher gives it what we talked about as a rainbow flight where it arcs up and comes down slowly rather than starting too low and back spinning into the air which is more of a stalling flight. We don’t really like that anymore, sort of an arcing, rainbow flight. Having it by the front leg, launch it higher, a little bit less spin, more height, more carry. And it's the most efficient way of hitting the golf ball so you have the ball nicely forwards against your front leg, you're body weight can stay back, left shoulder can be nice and high, sweep the club across the floor on the way back, and that really sets the path for how you're going to bring the club down to the ball.

We don't want to be lifting the golf club up like we do with the wedge and slamming back down on the ball, sweeping it nicely away coming back, big turn to the top, stay behind it. The bottom of the arc of the swing would actually be before the ball, then rising up. And that bottom of the arc, before the ball is a fairly new neat thing to the driver, you can't do that with an iron because you'd hit the ground before the ball and hit the ball fat. So here it bottoms out, it rises up through the shot, and you have a nice, big tall finish, hopefully just like this one.