Driving the Ball with Consistency

Transcript (not verbatim):

Let’s talk about driving the golf ball the best you can. The first thing a lot of folks, especially beginners get concerned with is the height of their tee. With today’s modern large headed drivers, particularly deep faced drivers, we want to see the ball up a little bit higher than we used to. A good guide would be the top edge of the club head to be about even with the equator of the golf ball. Some people like to take it lower, some people higher. That’s fine. Personal preferences is certainly appropriate.

There are some things we know about hitting hitting the driver. We want to get the ball forward in our stance to launch your drives at the right some things happen when we move the ball forward in our stance. There are some tendencies that folks have. When we put the ball in the middle of the stance, it is very easy to keep body weight 50/50, and to stay square as far as body lines go – shoulders, hips, knees and ankles. When we move the ball forward, a lot of beginners tend to lean their body weight forward and to get their shoulders open. That defeats the purpose of moving the ball forward.

When we move the ball forward, what we’re accomplishing is to allow the club to bottom out before impact. The only club that we do this with is generally with the driver. We strike the ball just after the club has bottomed out in an ascending motion. If we move our body weight forward, then where we’re simply hitting it on the way down as we would have if it was in the middle of our stance.

We move the ball forward in our stance, we keep our weight centered and our shoulders square to our target line, not to the ball. If I move my body to face the ball, now my shoulders are open.

We know that the target line is here, everything else needs to remain parallel and  balanced. We don’t want to be leaning this way or that way.

The ball is forward, I’m balanced and now I can make my normal swing and I’m striking the ball just a little bit later in the same swing arc, which means I’m going to hit the ball just slightly with an ascending blow.

Club face is square, ball forward, my weight is balanced and it feels like my weight is behind the ball here. It almost feels like the ball is under my left shoulder which it is. Then we give it a full turn back and through impact.

Good Luck!