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Insight - Hitting The Driver Too High

There are two major movements that a golfer will hit the ball high. One is the axis tilt movement that we talk about in transition. The second is the release of the right arm. Many golfers who use their right arm early in the downswing will have to lunge on top of the ball to create any compression. When you are working on delaying the right arm, it is very common to start hitting the ball high, unless you work on the retraining of the arm as well.

Tags: Speciality Shot, Driver, Member Question, Intermediate

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In this golf smart insight, we're going to answer a member question about hitting the ball

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to high with the driver. So this particular golfer from New York has had a little bit of

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issue with having kind of distance and consistency was kind of his major issues. Hitting the ball

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a little bit off the toe, main reason he was sitting off the toe, he had the pattern of a little

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bit of an early release with the right side so that right arm would get away from him and then

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that upper body would lunge more on top. This would cause a little bit of a kind of chicken wing

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or bringing the arms in on the follow-through that whole combination caused a lot of toe shots,

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a lot of poles, a lot of pull-draws, not really the best combination. So first thing we've been trying

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to work on has been trying to get a little bit more of this upper body shifting behind by doing

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the Jackson 5. Jackson 5 is one of the great movements for building a little bit more of this

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axis till. Now what'll happen is there's two major ways for me to create height. One would be

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by releasing the wrist, this gets more loft on the golf ball and the opposite one would be by

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staying behind the ball like so. This causes me to have a little bit more of a upward angle of

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attack which will cause me to have a higher launch. So in this golfer, in this particular golfer's

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what's going to happen is anytime you've gone from this pattern like so to now staying behind

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the ball but I still feel like my arm extending away from me is one of my main power sources.

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What's going to happen is I'm now going to add both. So I'm going to stay a little bit more

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behind the ball but I'm also going to release more on the right side of my body. That combination

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is going to cause a lot of height and typically a high right miss. So something that'll look

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similar like that. What we need to do is not bail on the upper body staying back. We don't want

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to go back to the upper body drifting ahead of the golf ball or on top of the golf ball with the

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driver. What we want to make sure we do is when we come down into this delivery position we want to

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make sure that that elbow continues to work past your body instead of lining up more in line with

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the ball. Typically when you do this it is going to feel like you've lost clubbed speed. So if you

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have the chance get on a radar so you can see that that's probably not the case. Because what will

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happen is this feeling of the right arm kind of flicking and releasing gives the perception of a lot

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of clubbed speed. But typically what I'll see on 3D is that will peek somewhere around here where

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if you have this arm working more across your body like so you will tend to peek your speed more

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at the golf ball and it'll allow you to have more of this side bend. So now I get the direction

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that my arms are kind of guiding the club more in the direction of the target instead of

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perpendicular to it. That combination helps to give us that kind of tour launch that we look for

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as well as transferring more of the speed into the golf ball. So if you are struggling with

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getting that upper body to stay behind and you're hitting ball really high, review the arm

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sections and transition and release and specifically look at how this right arm is going to work

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more across your body instead of more out at the golf ball. That combination will help bring the

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launch back down but in a much more powerful way than your typical way of bringing the launch down

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which would be lunging with the upper body to get on top of the golf ball. So try that.

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Let me know if it works. I've seen it work a lot of times with my students and I'm confident that

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if you can get this feeling it'll lead to a much more consistent and powerful ball fight.

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