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Driver Adjustments - How To Adjust Your Stock Swing For Tee Shots

When it comes to hitting a driver, there are certain movements that are more important than others.

Creating axis tilt - sternum behind the lower body by 4-8 inches

  • Starting the downswing with your lower body
  • Elbow bent and working across your body

Things you can "get away with"

  • Sway
  • Early extension
  • Flip or scoop

Playlists: Get More Distance

Tags: Not Enough Distance, Driver, Fairway Wood, Drill, Intermediate, Beginner

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This video we're going to talk about adjusting the stock full swing specifically for the driver.

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So let's start with what do we want the club to do that's slightly different with this than with the iron.

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With an iron we're trying to hit slightly down on the ball.

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Three, four, maybe five degrees.

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We're trying to have slightly descending glow.

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As it works more towards the driver you'll see that it becomes more and more flat.

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Now part of that is just going to be I'm standing further away and my stance is a little bit wider.

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But part of that is going to be the engine or powering things more from my lower body.

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So the club is going to be swinging on more of a flat angle of attack with the PGA tour average is about one degree down.

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But the LPGA is three degrees up and the long drive is five degrees up.

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So I think that guys like Rory are proving that if you can have this three degree upward angle of attack and still be very very consistent.

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As far as direction goes.

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So if you struggle hitting the ball straight when you start adding trying to hit up on the ball it's more how you're hitting up on the ball not the fact that you're hitting up on it.

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So now the second fact is because I'm have more of this flat or even positive angle of attack because the club is sweeping and working up.

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That means that I'm going to naturally have more of a fade bias to it.

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So because the path is going to be a little bit more left than it would be if I was hitting down I have to close the club face and actually adjust my direction.

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I'm swinging the path more out to the right to hit the same quality shot.

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So the two big things are I'm going to be hitting more low to high and I'm going to be swinging more into out with a closed club face in order to succeed with the driver.

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So now what movements help me make those all that possible?

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There's a couple key ones.

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The main one is or let's start with setup because that's first.

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So your stance with is going to be a little bit outside of driver with and I'm going to side bend a little bit more in order to get my hands through the golf ball.

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So if I'm here and then I side bend now my hands are even with the golf ball instead of getting here and then rotating.

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Now I'm actually still kind of predisposed to having more of this downward angle of attack.

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So I'm going to have a little bit more tilt.

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Now when I get to this end of my swing if I was to draw a line down or if I was to use 3D and look at the center of your pelvis compared to the center of your chest.

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Very good drivers of the golf ball are going to have a tilt away from the golf ball of somewhere around 6-7 even up to 8 inches.

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So again using my pelvis is about that means that my upper body is going to be significantly further back compared to what I'm going to do with an iron.

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So all the movements that get me to use this lower body properly to keep my upper body a little bit more behind are going to help with that path.

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Now a lot of golfers struggle with if I have that path I don't want to have to close the club face.

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And so that's why the motorcycle movement and having this shallow but closing club face is much more important for the driver than it is for any of kind of the mid-Irts.

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Now the other thing to notice is what can I get away with?

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So when it comes to the driver because my because the ball is teed up and I can have a little bit more disparity hide a low.

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The swing fault that caused my ground contact misses aren't going to be as critical.

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So I can get away with a little bit of a sway in fact it's not always the worst thing.

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There's a lot of really good drivers of the golf ball who have a one or two inch little sway off the ball in order to get more of their pressure right and in order to get that upper body behind.

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So that they don't have to make as major a kind of fallback move during the release.

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The other the other swing fault that you can kind of get away with is a little bit more of that early extension.

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Remember early extension is going to shallow out the path.

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So with the driver I want to have a shallow path.

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Now the problem is if it gets too much I'm going to tend to struggle with big blocks and hooks or if I don't know how to throttle it back with the irons.

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I'm going to tend to have contact misses especially with the shorter clubs.

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So there are better ways to get that kind of shallow path but you can use early extension.

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The other one would be kind of the hang back pattern.

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So if I tend to hang back on my right but I can still get the clubs to come from the inside.

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That's a great way to get that positive angle of attack and if I know how to kind of get the club face square from the inside while staying back there.

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I'll do great. The problem is a lot of golfers who hang back also tend to kind of spin and have the club face open and come way outside to hit.

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That pattern doesn't work too well for the driver.

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So while we're talking about what doesn't work for the driver let's talk about the three major killers that I see.

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One is going to be the forward line or the upper body getting more on top of the golf ball.

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Two is going to be the arms getting active too soon in the downswing and then three is going to be the arms getting too steep too soon in the downswing.

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So the lung is essentially when I get up towards the top of the swing that upper body getting either past or staying on top of my lower body.

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Now we talked about how we want to have especially with the driver.

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We want to have this six, seven, eight degree difference between where my lower body is and where my upper body is as I go through.

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Well if I lunge on top that makes it virtually impossible until my angle of attack is going to be really steep and I'm going to tend to almost use or use the upper body.

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I use my arms and hands to create all the loft.

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The second one is that arms too active too soon.

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So if I get up to the top of the swing and I extend my arms for creating speed, it is possible that I can use my body for support of that.

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And I can hit decent drives as far as direction.

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It's very hard to be extremely powerful if I'm using only my arms as my major power source or if they're getting too active too soon.

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Because what'll happen is when I use my lower body properly, it's going to create a lot of this tilt where this rotation behind the golf ball instead of more on top like so.

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Now if I did that and my arms got involved too soon, you could see that that's going to tend to make contact to good 18 inches behind the golf ball.

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So what happens is if my brain knows that my arms are going to get active, I'll tend to do more of that pattern where I'm going to tend to kind of stall with my body and let it just kind of position my arms for my release position.

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Now the last one is that arms getting too steep.

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So if I get up to the top of the swing and I tend to pull down even if they're not getting wide, which is very, very common.

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If I tend to pull down and I go into internal rotation in that trail arm and I get the club steep like this, there's very little that I can do.

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I'm going to tend to have more of an open club face, but there's very little I can do to not have a steep left path, which is just killer.

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Killer for the driver where I already am swinging a little bit more left because I'm hitting flat or even up on the ball.

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So it's important for you to understand that there are some differences between what happens with kind of the mid-Irons, what happens with the long clubs and what happens with the wedges.

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It's whole section is to help you understand what are the different adjustments and where the higher priorities when we're talking about the driver.

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