Hitting The Heel With Your Golf Driver (Video) - by Pete Styles
Hitting The Heel With Your Golf Driver (Video) - by Pete Styles

As we’ve established early on in these videos, somebody could be shanking the golf ball pretty much with any club in the bag, be it an iron beam being a putter or a wedge. And sometimes with the driver, it’s a little bit more difficult to check sometimes with the driver because there isn’t a curve hosel so we don’t necessarily get the dramatic 90 degrees to the right typical shank shot that we might get with an iron. But actually hitting the ball with a driver is still pretty critical, particularly when you hit in the heel. It’s not going to go as far. It’s going to fly quite low. It could have quite, you know, left to right curve just purely because we strike it down in this bottom corner.

So you’ve got to consider what the major faults are with the driver and what the corrections could be. Firstly, when we set up to the ball, let’s just go ahead and make sure that we are aligning it exactly in the middle of the club face at this position. Sometimes we see golfers get a bit near to it and actually push the ball off the heel of the golf club. Now, the set up generally speaking, you’re going to come back to that same location so let’s make sure it's set up. We are setting it up right in the middle of the golf club. Then during the swing, the typical fault for someone that’s going to heel the golf ball is they take the club to the top, they bring the club outside the line that over the top. They’re coming down from the outside and you can see how that would lead the heel to strike the ball first as you then come across the ball. So quite often, the heel is associated with somebody that might cut or slice the golf ball a little bit too much as well so the outer and over the top motion is quite a big fault. We’d also be encouraging the club to come down more from the inside, attach the ball a little straighter from the inside for better ball flight but also for better strike. One more consideration with driver has got to be weight position, making sure that we stay balanced. Quite often with the driver particularly, the golfer is trying to hit the ball a bit harder than they all do with an iron. They’re trying to hit the ball as far as the counter, trying to keep with the mates so when they set up to the ball, they’re balanced here, they give it a big old Heave H.O.E. during the downswing. Their changed position gets a little bit out of balance and they’re not able to maintain that balance after their shots. If they’re unbalanced during the downswing, they could be leading the heels into the golf ball creating effectively that shank or that heel strike that’s going to cause them some issues in terms of distance and direction. So try and check those areas out with your driver to make sure you're getting good solid ball striking with the biggest club in the bag. 2016-04-21

As we’ve established early on in these videos, somebody could be shanking the golf ball pretty much with any club in the bag, be it an iron beam being a putter or a wedge. And sometimes with the driver, it’s a little bit more difficult to check sometimes with the driver because there isn’t a curve hosel so we don’t necessarily get the dramatic 90 degrees to the right typical shank shot that we might get with an iron. But actually hitting the ball with a driver is still pretty critical, particularly when you hit in the heel. It’s not going to go as far. It’s going to fly quite low. It could have quite, you know, left to right curve just purely because we strike it down in this bottom corner.

So you’ve got to consider what the major faults are with the driver and what the corrections could be. Firstly, when we set up to the ball, let’s just go ahead and make sure that we are aligning it exactly in the middle of the club face at this position. Sometimes we see golfers get a bit near to it and actually push the ball off the heel of the golf club. Now, the set up generally speaking, you’re going to come back to that same location so let’s make sure it's set up. We are setting it up right in the middle of the golf club.

Then during the swing, the typical fault for someone that’s going to heel the golf ball is they take the club to the top, they bring the club outside the line that over the top. They’re coming down from the outside and you can see how that would lead the heel to strike the ball first as you then come across the ball. So quite often, the heel is associated with somebody that might cut or slice the golf ball a little bit too much as well so the outer and over the top motion is quite a big fault. We’d also be encouraging the club to come down more from the inside, attach the ball a little straighter from the inside for better ball flight but also for better strike.

One more consideration with driver has got to be weight position, making sure that we stay balanced. Quite often with the driver particularly, the golfer is trying to hit the ball a bit harder than they all do with an iron. They’re trying to hit the ball as far as the counter, trying to keep with the mates so when they set up to the ball, they’re balanced here, they give it a big old Heave H.O.E. during the downswing. Their changed position gets a little bit out of balance and they’re not able to maintain that balance after their shots. If they’re unbalanced during the downswing, they could be leading the heels into the golf ball creating effectively that shank or that heel strike that’s going to cause them some issues in terms of distance and direction. So try and check those areas out with your driver to make sure you're getting good solid ball striking with the biggest club in the bag.