Top 3 Ways to Hit Longer Drives - Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Top 3 Ways to Hit Longer Drives - Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

Feet, whoosh, tilt.

Here are 3 little exercises that hopefully will maximize the distance you can hit the golf ball with your driver. We’re not trying to change the fundamentals of your swing. We’re just going to try and give you 3 exercises that accelerate the golf club a little bit more into the back of the ball.

If you feel that you’re in a good address position when you start off but then you’re not quite maximizing your backswing turn, or when you try, your feet start to come up, particularly your front leg, here’s a good exercise for you.

I’d like you to lay the golf club over the front of your shoulders, tilt forward to the ball. Work hard on pointing the club head, sorry, the handle down at the golf ball, legs are staying still. Then work hard on pointing the club head down at the golf ball, legs are still staying still.

We’re not having the heels lifting up here. What we’re trying to create is a big coiling rotation, feel like the shoulders get quite tight. You can hear my voice there, that’s quite tight for me to turn. That’s building power as I release through.

So it’s feet on the floor, feet on the floor, generating lots of coil in the upper body for lots of power when I hit the golf ball.

The next thing that I often see people do is they just fail to accelerate into the golf ball. They turn back nicely and then just forget to hit it. They just get a bit slow on the downswing. A great way to let you go and to accelerate is to spin the golf club over and listen to this sound. You can hear the grip and the lot back. You can hear the head on.

So I set up now. I’m making a big shoulder rotation in the backswing. Then as I swing down, I want to hear that swoosh. I want to make sure I swoosh through the impact area. That’s where the club should be travelling. It’s fastest. That’s where I want to accelerate.

My power isn’t all here. I don’t hit here. Likewise, I don’t hit here. I’m not my fastest round there because I would’ve hit the ball already. So, I want to be as fast as I can right through the impact there at the bottom. By swinging that way around, I can make sure I’m nicely committed when I turn the club over.

Another source of sort of lacking in power is the fact that people hit down on their drivers too much. If you have the ball sitting near your left side, there is a feeling that you want to get your body over to that left side and get in front of it. That’s the wrong feeling.

With the driver, we really need to feel like we’re hitting up onto the golf ball. The up onto the ball feeling can happen from set-up as well. In my address position, I drop my right shoulder down, lift my left shoulder up, and actually have quite an aggressive spine angle tilt leaning back away from the golf ball.

So it’s setting up in this position. If my shoulders are pointing up, I’m going to encourage my swing to come up through the golf ball, shallowing out my angle of attack. In fact if the ball is teed up high enough, I can actually attack the ball from underneath and hit up into the golf ball.

It’s pretty much the only shot I can do that really. Most of the other shots in golf, I’d be hitting down. Particularly anything that’s off the turf, I have to hit down. With the driver, I can change my spine angle tilt, hit up through the golf ball, and generate more power on a longer, higher flight with those 3 little changes.

2013-01-18

Feet, whoosh, tilt.

Here are 3 little exercises that hopefully will maximize the distance you can hit the golf ball with your driver. We’re not trying to change the fundamentals of your swing. We’re just going to try and give you 3 exercises that accelerate the golf club a little bit more into the back of the ball.

If you feel that you’re in a good address position when you start off but then you’re not quite maximizing your backswing turn, or when you try, your feet start to come up, particularly your front leg, here’s a good exercise for you.

I’d like you to lay the golf club over the front of your shoulders, tilt forward to the ball. Work hard on pointing the club head, sorry, the handle down at the golf ball, legs are staying still. Then work hard on pointing the club head down at the golf ball, legs are still staying still.

We’re not having the heels lifting up here. What we’re trying to create is a big coiling rotation, feel like the shoulders get quite tight. You can hear my voice there, that’s quite tight for me to turn. That’s building power as I release through.

So it’s feet on the floor, feet on the floor, generating lots of coil in the upper body for lots of power when I hit the golf ball.

The next thing that I often see people do is they just fail to accelerate into the golf ball. They turn back nicely and then just forget to hit it. They just get a bit slow on the downswing. A great way to let you go and to accelerate is to spin the golf club over and listen to this sound. You can hear the grip and the lot back. You can hear the head on.

So I set up now. I’m making a big shoulder rotation in the backswing. Then as I swing down, I want to hear that swoosh. I want to make sure I swoosh through the impact area. That’s where the club should be travelling. It’s fastest. That’s where I want to accelerate.

My power isn’t all here. I don’t hit here. Likewise, I don’t hit here. I’m not my fastest round there because I would’ve hit the ball already. So, I want to be as fast as I can right through the impact there at the bottom. By swinging that way around, I can make sure I’m nicely committed when I turn the club over.

Another source of sort of lacking in power is the fact that people hit down on their drivers too much. If you have the ball sitting near your left side, there is a feeling that you want to get your body over to that left side and get in front of it. That’s the wrong feeling.

With the driver, we really need to feel like we’re hitting up onto the golf ball. The up onto the ball feeling can happen from set-up as well. In my address position, I drop my right shoulder down, lift my left shoulder up, and actually have quite an aggressive spine angle tilt leaning back away from the golf ball.

So it’s setting up in this position. If my shoulders are pointing up, I’m going to encourage my swing to come up through the golf ball, shallowing out my angle of attack. In fact if the ball is teed up high enough, I can actually attack the ball from underneath and hit up into the golf ball.

It’s pretty much the only shot I can do that really. Most of the other shots in golf, I’d be hitting down. Particularly anything that’s off the turf, I have to hit down. With the driver, I can change my spine angle tilt, hit up through the golf ball, and generate more power on a longer, higher flight with those 3 little changes.