Straight Drives - Lesson by PGA Pros Pete Styles & Matt Fryer
Straight Drives - Lesson by PGA Pros Pete Styles & Matt Fryer

In this tip PGA golf professionals Pete Styles and Matt Fryer will help you understand how a neutral club path and a square club face combined with a good ball strike will help you hit your driver dead straight. Neutral path combined with a square face will help to reduce the spin that is imparted on the golf ball at contact. This in turn will reduce the golf ball's curvature and result in straighter golf shots.

Matt would you agree that the can be no better feeling in the game of golf then hitting the big dog straight down the middle of the fairway. Yeah it's the shot we all want to see if you've bombed one out that is nothing better especially in font of your friends. Absolutely things you talk about in the clubhouse after with these how well you get that driver how long you've hit a driver but quite importantly if you score how straight you hit that driver, Yeah definitely you hit play off the tee it becomes a lot easier from there. I think a lot of golfers maybe set themselves up each hole quite badly because they don't hit the driver straight it curves one way or another and straight away they're struggling, they're in the trees, they are chipping out sideways and their score is taking its toll because of that. So hitting the driver straight essential to feel good about your game certainly essential to improve your score.

So Matt is now going to help us better understand a little bit more about how we can hit this driver dead straight. Firstly Matt explain to myself and the viewers why we don't hit driver straight currently. Yeah so one of the big things I think in all your golf shots as well if we can understand our face and our path relationship number one where the club face is pointing at impact relative to our target line and then also where the clubs traveling relative to the target line and the relationship between those two is going to impart different types of spin on the golf ball. So we're talking about where the face is aiming and also how the club is traveling. Yeah exactly. Correct me if I'm wrong if those 2 things at the same the ball will fly quite straight. Yeah definitely when we get big differences in them that's when you're going to see a lot of curvature on the golf ball. So the perfect shot is the club traveling down the straight line with the face aiming down the middle and that's that the holy grail that's what we're aiming for. Definitely. Now what would you see most golfers amateur gofers club golfers do you feel what you think that their faults look like. You know the most common one we see is the slice obviously we'll see the people come in for a lesson with the big banana like slice that's causing a lot of issues on the tee, and what generally we're going to find with that is something where they may have a good grip, good set up, and everything but as they're delivering the club now back to the ball we're going to see a face that's open to the path. So if we face pointing this way. Yeah we see something if we've got the target line on here now the face is going to be pointing right of target and the club is going to be swinging across delivering and glancing blow and that's going to impart that spin and get that big turn on the golf ball.

OK so that would be someone that slices the golf ball from left to right. Yes. Possibly a little bit rarer but we do see it as well it's golfers that hook the ball overdraw the ball. Yeah you're just going to flip that on the head so from there we see someone now where the face is looking left of the target but the clubs actually traveling out towards the right of the target as they do that and that will impart your hook spin onto it. Another thing that's going to be important as well is getting the centered strike with the driver we've got bulge and roll on the face so they're not slack like you're iron. If you don't quite get the centered strike the manufacturers have been quite kind towards they're going to try and help that ball get back towards target so will impart slightly different spin to try and get it back so you'll see something if you get out with the toe of the golf club quite a lot you can see more of a hooking shot vice versa a hail you'll see more of a cutting shot or a slicing shot. So you know getting the face and the path matched up and getting a centered strike is the things that we need to be hitting a straighter golf shot. So when this ball hits and particularly more so with the driver than the irons we hit it very hard limit it very far so any separation between face and path any dispersion of the strike on the face creates what would effectively call side spin.

Now the track the flights get that sort of thing we now know that's not sight beneath it's true in set in its truest stance the ball is still back spinning but it's back spinning on an axis so it's not pure backspin it's of back spinning on an angle and that will start to curve the ball. A lot of golfers will come in to lesson with Matt and I and say I hit my iron straight, but I struggle with my driver, and that's because with the irons there's so much more back spin the ball will fly straighter when we reduce backspin with the driver we're getting down below 3000 revs and that's 2000 revs of backspin the signs becomes a lot more evident. Yeah loft on the club big big big factor so even if you have if you look on tour now a lot of drivers are up now I got an eleven and a half myself so even as a tip getting a slightly lofted higher is going to help get a bit more backspin a little bit straighter as well. So less lost less backspin more evidence side spin. Exactly so maybe it's a bit suggestion you know in terms of your equipment if you're a golfer who struggles with finding the fairway using more lofted product 11 12 degrees something of that nature. Yeah putting the back spin on the shot like you probably experience with your 3 woods and your 5 woods would be more backspin the higher the ball might fly but also the straighter it might fly.

Now if you really are struggling to hit the ball straight we would suggest that you look at that face to path relationship as Matt explained before. Trying to understand to know whether you can take it in to out or out to in understand the relationship of the club face and how much the ball is curving. If you're struggling with that take a lesson with a PGA golf professional get your numbers from Track Man or all flight something similar, and that will help hit you ready for this Matt and that'll help you hit a straight golf shot just like this one. That was pretty good set up nicely just drew away a little bit the that might work work on maybe by face the path wasn't quite right on the ball just slightly with a draw hopefully those tips will help you hit it straight driver shot.

2018-11-09

In this tip PGA golf professionals Pete Styles and Matt Fryer will help you understand how a neutral club path and a square club face combined with a good ball strike will help you hit your driver dead straight. Neutral path combined with a square face will help to reduce the spin that is imparted on the golf ball at contact. This in turn will reduce the golf ball's curvature and result in straighter golf shots.

Matt would you agree that the can be no better feeling in the game of golf then hitting the big dog straight down the middle of the fairway. Yeah it's the shot we all want to see if you've bombed one out that is nothing better especially in font of your friends. Absolutely things you talk about in the clubhouse after with these how well you get that driver how long you've hit a driver but quite importantly if you score how straight you hit that driver, Yeah definitely you hit play off the tee it becomes a lot easier from there. I think a lot of golfers maybe set themselves up each hole quite badly because they don't hit the driver straight it curves one way or another and straight away they're struggling, they're in the trees, they are chipping out sideways and their score is taking its toll because of that. So hitting the driver straight essential to feel good about your game certainly essential to improve your score.

So Matt is now going to help us better understand a little bit more about how we can hit this driver dead straight. Firstly Matt explain to myself and the viewers why we don't hit driver straight currently. Yeah so one of the big things I think in all your golf shots as well if we can understand our face and our path relationship number one where the club face is pointing at impact relative to our target line and then also where the clubs traveling relative to the target line and the relationship between those two is going to impart different types of spin on the golf ball. So we're talking about where the face is aiming and also how the club is traveling. Yeah exactly. Correct me if I'm wrong if those 2 things at the same the ball will fly quite straight. Yeah definitely when we get big differences in them that's when you're going to see a lot of curvature on the golf ball. So the perfect shot is the club traveling down the straight line with the face aiming down the middle and that's that the holy grail that's what we're aiming for. Definitely. Now what would you see most golfers amateur gofers club golfers do you feel what you think that their faults look like. You know the most common one we see is the slice obviously we'll see the people come in for a lesson with the big banana like slice that's causing a lot of issues on the tee, and what generally we're going to find with that is something where they may have a good grip, good set up, and everything but as they're delivering the club now back to the ball we're going to see a face that's open to the path. So if we face pointing this way. Yeah we see something if we've got the target line on here now the face is going to be pointing right of target and the club is going to be swinging across delivering and glancing blow and that's going to impart that spin and get that big turn on the golf ball.

OK so that would be someone that slices the golf ball from left to right. Yes. Possibly a little bit rarer but we do see it as well it's golfers that hook the ball overdraw the ball. Yeah you're just going to flip that on the head so from there we see someone now where the face is looking left of the target but the clubs actually traveling out towards the right of the target as they do that and that will impart your hook spin onto it. Another thing that's going to be important as well is getting the centered strike with the driver we've got bulge and roll on the face so they're not slack like you're iron. If you don't quite get the centered strike the manufacturers have been quite kind towards they're going to try and help that ball get back towards target so will impart slightly different spin to try and get it back so you'll see something if you get out with the toe of the golf club quite a lot you can see more of a hooking shot vice versa a hail you'll see more of a cutting shot or a slicing shot. So you know getting the face and the path matched up and getting a centered strike is the things that we need to be hitting a straighter golf shot. So when this ball hits and particularly more so with the driver than the irons we hit it very hard limit it very far so any separation between face and path any dispersion of the strike on the face creates what would effectively call side spin.

Now the track the flights get that sort of thing we now know that's not sight beneath it's true in set in its truest stance the ball is still back spinning but it's back spinning on an axis so it's not pure backspin it's of back spinning on an angle and that will start to curve the ball. A lot of golfers will come in to lesson with Matt and I and say I hit my iron straight, but I struggle with my driver, and that's because with the irons there's so much more back spin the ball will fly straighter when we reduce backspin with the driver we're getting down below 3000 revs and that's 2000 revs of backspin the signs becomes a lot more evident. Yeah loft on the club big big big factor so even if you have if you look on tour now a lot of drivers are up now I got an eleven and a half myself so even as a tip getting a slightly lofted higher is going to help get a bit more backspin a little bit straighter as well. So less lost less backspin more evidence side spin. Exactly so maybe it's a bit suggestion you know in terms of your equipment if you're a golfer who struggles with finding the fairway using more lofted product 11 12 degrees something of that nature. Yeah putting the back spin on the shot like you probably experience with your 3 woods and your 5 woods would be more backspin the higher the ball might fly but also the straighter it might fly.

Now if you really are struggling to hit the ball straight we would suggest that you look at that face to path relationship as Matt explained before. Trying to understand to know whether you can take it in to out or out to in understand the relationship of the club face and how much the ball is curving. If you're struggling with that take a lesson with a PGA golf professional get your numbers from Track Man or all flight something similar, and that will help hit you ready for this Matt and that'll help you hit a straight golf shot just like this one. That was pretty good set up nicely just drew away a little bit the that might work work on maybe by face the path wasn't quite right on the ball just slightly with a draw hopefully those tips will help you hit it straight driver shot.