I’ve hit some long drives. For example, I hit a monster on Blacklick Woods’ no. 7 and drove the green. I drove the green at Rolling Meadows’ holes 2 and 16 and came a few yards short on holes 9, 10, 15 and 18. I hit my biggest drive ever (with some wind aid) and left myself 125 yards to the first green at Rolling Meadows (a par 5).
How do you knock the tar out of the driver? John Daly had some great advice – take it back low and slow. Your backswing should start out low to the ground and slow. Sounds pretty simple but believe me, out of everything I’ve tried, this works the best.
I should have mentioned this first – get a decent driver. You don’t have to buy the latest and the greatest but spend a couple hundred bucks and get something that’s a year or two years old and is a recognized brand (like Callaway, Cobra, Cleveland, Taylor Made, etc.). It’s hard to go wrong with one of these. Consider looking on ebay.com or golfclubexchange.com. I rented clubs recently and was appalled over the low quality of the clubs including the driver. You can’t hit the ball very far with crappy clubs. If you want to get a few extra yards out of your new driver, consider getting fit and sizing it to your swing, determine whether another shaft might work better for you, and find out what loft works best for you.
Get rid of the slice. Nothing robs distance like a slice. You can still hit it quite a ways with a fade but the straight ball or the draw works better for hitting it far. One key is learning how to get your hands through the ball. Another is to eliminate the outside to inside swing.
Strengthen your upper and lower body as well as your core muscles. Overall improved strength will help you pound the ball a country mile.
Increase your flexibility. Yoga is a good thing for golfers. Find a class and go a couple times a week and then develop your own practice at home.
More thought on hitting the driver far
To hit your driver a country mile, you need to understand where you get your power from in the golf swing. First off you don’t get power from an extra long backswing. It may work for John Daly but it generally doesn’t work for the average amateur golfer. An extra long backswing usually robs the average amateur of power. It gets him or her off balance and if you are off balance, you’ve lost power. I get plenty of power from a 3/4 backswing.
To hit the ball far, plug the power leak in your legs. For a right handed golfer this means that as you take your backswing, your weight needs to shift to the inside of your right foot. If you feel your weight on the outside of your right foot, your power has leaked out and escaped. This is why you see golfers at the range hitting shots while keeping a golf ball under the outside part of their right foot. Its reminding them to keep their weight on the inside of their right foot as they take their backswing. As you begin your downswing, that weight must transfer from your right to left foot in order to generate power and hit the ball far.
If you transfer your weight to the inside part of your right foot during the backswing, this should control the turning of your hips. If you shift your weight from right to left foot during your downswing then this should also guide your hips through the ball.
Your shoulders should turn more than your hips in order to generate power. Even with a 3/4 backswing, I get a good shoulder turn. To get a good shoulder turn, I concentrate on my left arm. If your left arm breaks down/severely bends at the top of your backswing, you’ve lost power. I try to keep the left arm relatively straight and, on my backswing, I try to keep the left arm very close to the body. In fact, I want to feel it brush against my chest/stomach as I take my backswing.
Another power source are your wrists. I cock my wrists during the backswing and turn my hands over as I hit through the ball. Amateurs rarely get their hands/wrists through the ball and this results in weak fades and slices. An easy way to release your hands is to lighten your grip pressure on the club. Quit choking the damn thing and let it breathe a little. When you understand your power sources and get them to work together, you will smash the golf ball a long ways.
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