How to Reliably Hit Your Driver Straight
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For nearly three decades, I have been working in the golf business. I have been coaching the game for about twenty of those years. During that time, my students frequently requested help hitting the driver. The driver has always been the most requested aspect of the game for my students to work on. Unsurprisingly, they want to learn how to hit it long and straight.
When I think about this fact, it reminds me of the old adage, "Drive for show, putt for dough." While hitting the driver well is an important part of the game, you will only hit it 11 to 14 times per round. On the other hand, players will use the putter anywhere between 30 and 40 times in a round. Your wedges will be used anywhere from 14 to 20 times, either in a full swing capacity or a shot around the green. Each club's usage variance will change according to a golfer's ability level. In the big picture, make no mistake: The putter is the most hit club in your golf bag. Your wedges are next in line.
Today, I will give you tips for hitting the driver straighter. These tips target golfers who "drive for show" as they play, even though other areas of the game are a tiny bit more important.
As you will see by reading on, sometimes, simple adjustments may just be what the doctor ordered to help you hit the driver straighter and longer.
Okay, Okay, the Driver Does Have Some Importance
What I mentioned above is true. Your putting and short game are the most important parts of the game for scoring well. However, I may have been a bit dramatic in downplaying the drivers' importance. Indeed, it is a big deal to get off the tee and put the ball in the fairway. Doing so consistently will allow you to score better. Keeping it in play with the driver and having the ability to hit it long is an even bigger advantage for sure.
Today, I will focus solely on helping you hit the ball straighter with the driver. I will save focusing on the distance aspect for another day and a future article. While my suggestions in this article aim to help you find more fairways, keep in mind that they will also have a positive side effect. This side effect will indeed include the potential for increased distance. After all, when you find the center of the clubface more often, you will hit it straighter and longer as well.
First: What You Do Before You Even Swing the Club Matters
How you set up to the ball and the pre-swing fundamentals of posture, grip, and alignment are critical components for playing the game well. No matter what club you are using, these aspects are very important. Your stance, grip, and body alignment impact the outcome you get from your swing.
Posture
Posture in golf is how you set your body up to the ball before swinging. Doing this correctly will allow you to move the body properly once you start the swing. Getting into the correct posture can be achieved in a few quick steps, as shown in the video below by acclaimed instructor Jim McLean:
Another part of the setup is the ball position. I generally mention ball position with the posture area of the pre-swing fundamentals. In general terms, you want to have a slightly wider stance with the driver, roughly just past shoulder width.
The ball should be positioned near the front of your stance, just off of the heel of your lead foot. For right-handed golfers, that would be your left heel, and for left-handed golfers, just off the heel of your right foot. That ball position, combined with a proper secondary spine tilt, will help you have a more upward angle of attack at impact, increasing your launch angle.
Grip
Your only connection between your body and the club is through your hands. With that in mind, it makes a lot of sense that how you hold the golf club affects your success.
Your grip literally controls what the clubface is doing during your swing. A squarely struck shot with your driver, or any club, requires your hands to deliver that clubface squarely into the ball. In terms of hitting the ball straighter, the most important hand is your lead hand.
The video below is from Hall of Fame coach Jim McLean. He will guide you on how to have a great grip and one that will help you hit the ball straighter.
Alignment
Alignment is one of the most crucial aspects of hitting the ball accurately. It determines the direction of your shot.
Golfers often align their bodies directly to the target. This is incorrect for setting up before hitting a shot. Correct alignment requires your clubface to be square to the target line, an imaginary line running from your ball toward the target (fairway, green, etc.). It is not the body that aligns with the target.
Right-handed golfers should have their bodies running parallel to the target on the left; This includes your feet, knees, hips, and shoulders. Left-handed golfers should have their bodies running parallel to the target on the right. When you align your body with the target, your clubface and target line will be too far right. This is true for right-handed golfers. Lefties will be too far to the left with the clubface.
To understand the three pre-swing fundamentals mentioned above, read my article "How to Swing a Golf Club" on Curated.
If your pre-swing fundamentals are solid, then all of your inswing fundaments, including
- Takeaway
- Backswing
- Top of your swing positioning
- Downswing
- Impact position
Stand a better chance of also being solid too.
Second: Learn Swing Path Basics and How Your Clubface Alignment Plays a Role
Golfers often discover that focusing on pre-swing basics resolves driver issues. This typically happens most through working on alignment and grip. The problems tend to fade once they concentrate on these aspects (pun intended). Your first step to help improve your driver accuracy is pre-swing checkpoints. Doing so will improve driver accuracy.
When tightening up your swing mechanics, I feel the best approach is to deconstruct things by working backward. Where you go with that will be based on the results from the shots you are hitting. For instance, if you consistently slice the ball, you must analyze the outcome. Then, you should determine the cause. You are like a CSI agent working with the clues you have to solve the mystery.
Assuming you are lined up properly and have a good grip, only two main swing items can cause your golf ball to go wayward. The first is what the face of your golf club is doing at impact in relation to your swing path. The second is, of course, your swing path.
If you want to learn how to hit the driver straighter and eliminate your slice or hook, you need to understand the dynamics of face and path. These greatly influence the shots you hit.
As a coach, one of my first missions is to help golfers understand the proper workings of the golf swing. After they understand that, then we start to look at their swing as it is currently. We then find the contrast between the two. How the swing is supposed to work, and how their swing is working. Then we work back from there.
Path to Correcting Your Swing: “The Modern Ball Flight Laws”
“The Modern Ball Flight Laws” is something that I have touched on in previous articles here on Curated. Learning these principles will help set you on the right path to understanding how to correct your swing. Once you do, hitting the ball straighter will be a piece of cake.
- Straight Shot: Face is square to target and square to a straight path
- Straight Slice: Face is square to target and open to outside to inside path
- Straight Draw: Face is square to target and closed to inside to outside path
- Push Slice: Face is open to the target and open to a straight path
- Push Straight: Face is open to target and square to inside to outside path
- Push Draw: Face is open to target and closed to inside to outside path
- Pull Slice: Face is closed to target and open to outside to inside path
- Pull Straight: Face is closed to target and square to outside to inside path
- Pull Draw: Face is closed to the target and closed to a straight path
To visualize these nine laws simply by reading may prove difficult for some to conceptualize. The video below will help those who need more of a visual.
Third: Consider a Shorter-Length Driver
With the driver being the longest club in your bag, it will inherently be one of the hardest clubs to control. Despite that fact, the problem for many golfers is their obsession with hitting drives far. They chase swing speed rather than hitting fairways. It's not hard to understand, either. The game, on so many levels, is dominated by having to know how fast a player's clubhead speed is with their driver swing or what their ball speed is. That might be fine for the professional, but amateur golfers should worry more about keeping the ball on the golf course.
This leads me to my last nugget of information to help you start hitting the ball straighter with your driver. As a general rule, I rarely like to place blame on one's equipment as the reason for poor play. In this case, however, I will boldly claim that most golfers are playing driver shafts that cause them to hit fewer fairways.
I always had a hunch that the driver length most golfers were playing was too long. What finally reinforced this as a major factor in missed fairways for many was a recent fitting I took a student to. In that fitting, my student and I both learned a very interesting fact: The average length of a driver on the PGA TOUR is 44.75”, yet the average length of an amateur driver is between 45.25” and 46.5”.
The point of this is that long clubs are harder to control. A longer shaft means that the driver's head has a longer area to cover before it reaches impact. That longer area to cover requires a golfer to control the clubface more as it approaches the ball at impact. There is a reason why PGA TOUR players, the best golfers in the world, play shorter-length drivers: They want to hit more fairways. It’s pretty simple.
An added unlikely bonus that defies conventional logic and even physics is you will likely hit your driver further with a shorter driver. Why? Because you will be hitting the center of the clubface more often. The video below is from friend and fellow PGA Professional Nick Clearwater. In this video, Nick, the Vice President of Instruction for GOLFTEC, explains why.
Reach Out to a Curated Golf Expert
“Drive for show, putt for dough” may be a popular phrase, but perhaps something like “Drive straight, feel great” might be more appropriate in this game. I know it's corny, but I promise you, if you change your mindset to that, you will hit better tee shots and play better golf.
If you ever need help with your golf game, feel free to contact me here on Curated or any other Curated Golf Expert.