Pounding Driver 101 – A Simple Beginner’s Checklist for the LONG BALL (Ep.5)
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Here’s what you need to know about driving the ball like a champ. There are some tendencies that we all fall into that’ll sabotage our chances for success. An easy pre-swing checklist usually does the trick.
Let’s parse out our “pre-swing” and our “in-swing” thoughts. It’s a lot easier. Once we nail down our pre-swing stuff, then we shift our focus to the 1 in-swing thought…super helpful for consistency and clarity.
Pre-Swing
I’m giving you a maximum of 3 pre-swing thoughts. Think of it like a checklist…once it’s done, it’s done and you don’t need to think about them anymore.
- Ball Forward, Weight Centered – Most people know that we want to position the ball forward. The nasty tendency is to shift your body weight left as well. Don’t do it…just make sure you stay 50/50 regardless of where the ball is.
- Shoulders Tilted and Square – Again, when we move the ball away from the center of the stance, the tendency is to open our shoulders to face the ball. This leads to bad stuff in the golf swing. Allow your left shoulder to rise up, but don’t turn your upper body. A line drawn across your shoulders should remain parallel to the target line.
- Grip – Beginners almost always have a grip that’s too weak, leading to an open club face at impact (slice). Make sure your hands are rotated just a bit around the handle so that your thumbs are more onto the side of the grip than on top.
Done. Now on to the one in-swing thought. No more than one guys.
In-Swing
Keep it super simple. Nothing complicated…you don’t have time.
Believe it or not, here’s one that I use:
Turn your back to the target, then turn your belt buckle to the target.
That’s it…focus more on pre-swing than in-swing and you’ll win. In-swing stuff is where everyone wants to look, but pre-swing is easy to fix and brings super high impact for consistency and power.
Cheers!
