How Champions Tour Players Drive the Ball Effectively

Watching Champions Tour players is a great reminder that effective driving is not just a young player’s game. These golfers may not move with the same speed or range of motion as the longest players on the PGA Tour, but the underlying geometry of good driving still shows up. They still find a way to shallow the club, tilt the body away from the target, and deliver the driver on a launch-friendly path. If you want to hit the ball farther and more solidly—especially as your body changes with age—there is a lot to learn from how these players organize their motion.

Why good driving requires a shallow approach

The driver is different from every other full-swing club in your bag. It has very little loft, and to launch it high with low enough spin to maximize distance, you usually need to strike the ball with a slightly upward angle of attack. That means the club cannot be traveling too steeply into the ball.

If your downswing gets overly vertical, you are forced to make compensations at the bottom. You might add loft with the wrists, flip the clubhead, or time a last-second reroute. Those fixes can work occasionally, but they are not reliable.

That is why elite drivers of the ball almost always create shallowness in one of two ways:

• Body-driven shallowing through side bend, tilt, and bracing
• Arm-and-wrist shallowing through unhinging and clubhead delivery

The best pattern is usually some blend of both. Champions Tour players are a perfect study in this because they often do not have the same spinal flexibility they had at 25, yet they still create the right delivery conditions.

The classic driver shape: body angled away as the arms extend

One of the most important ideas in good driving is that the body does not simply keep drifting toward the target through impact. Many golfers are taught to “get your weight forward” and end up stacking everything over the lead leg too early. That can work for a wedge or a short iron, but with the driver it often creates a steep strike.

The better model is what Tyler often describes as a “Jackson 5” alignment: the lower body begins to move forward and brace, while the upper body stays back or even appears to fall away from the target. At the same time, the arms extend more out toward the target on a shallower, more horizontal path.

This creates the classic look you see in strong drivers of the golf ball:

• The pelvis is moving into a braced lead-side position
• The chest is tilted away from the target
• The club is traveling shallower through the strike
• The follow-through looks balanced, not because the player forced balance, but because the motion’s geometry is sound

That last point matters. Many golfers think balance means finishing more forward. In reality, balance is a result of matching your body to the forces of the swing. If the club is swinging more around you on a shallow path, your body needs to angle away from it to stay organized.

How Tom Lehman shows this pattern with an aging body

Tom Lehman is a great example of a player who still produces excellent driving and ball striking with a motion that fits an older body. At a key point in the downswing, his upper body is relatively centered and upright. If he simply kept moving everything toward the target and threw the arms out, the club would get steep.

Instead, as he approaches impact, his upper body begins to back up while the lower body continues into a braced lead-side position. The result is a strong tilt away from the target through the strike.

What is especially useful here is where that tilt comes from. Younger players may create more dramatic side bend through the spine. Lehman still has some of that, but he creates a lot of his shape through the pelvis. His hips are angled in a way that helps support the overall delivery without requiring an extreme amount of spinal side bend.

Why this matters for you:

• If you are older or less flexible, you may not need a huge spine bend to drive it well
• You can create much of the needed shape through your hip alignments and lower-body bracing
• The goal is not to copy a young long hitter’s look, but to preserve the same functional geometry

Bernhard Langer: efficient motion, same physics

Bernhard Langer is another ideal model. His swing may look smoother and less explosive than a modern power player’s, but the club still arrives on a functional path because he organizes his body correctly.

At halfway down, Langer has shifted pressure into the lead side, but he is not wildly tilted yet. If he kept moving the torso forward from there, the club would become too steep. Instead, he transitions into a braced delivery where the upper body falls away from the target as the arms extend.

This is the key distinction:

• Pressure can move forward
• The upper body does not need to chase forward with it

That separation is what allows the driver to shallow and launch. It is a subtle move, but it is one of the most important concepts in the golf swing.

Langer also shows that there is more than one way to create the same overall shape. Some players use more spine, others more hips, knees, or ankles. The details vary, but the pattern remains familiar: lower body bracing forward, upper body angling back, arms extending on a shallower route.

Kenny Perry and the importance of using the pelvis and knees

Kenny Perry offers another useful example for older golfers. Even when the camera angle is not perfect, you can still see the hallmark pattern: the lower body gets ahead while the upper body stays back enough to support a shallow strike.

As flexibility declines, it becomes more important to create this shape through the pelvis and even the knees. Think of it as building the right impact structure from the ground up rather than trying to force a dramatic upper-body bend.

That is encouraging news if you no longer have the mobility you once had. You do not need to manufacture a contorted look. You need to create enough of the right alignments that the club can approach from a playable angle.

In practical terms, that means:

• The lead side needs to brace
• The hips need to help support tilt away from the target
• The upper body should not lunge on top of the ball
• The arms should be allowed to extend more outward rather than only downward

Colin Montgomerie: balancing steep and shallow

Colin Montgomerie is especially interesting because he shows that you can still be a very good driver of the ball even if parts of your motion look steeper than ideal. His arm action is not as shallow-looking as some other players, but he balances that with excellent body motion and delivery.

From face-on, you still see the same general pattern: the upper body falls away from the target while the arms extend. He uses his hips and knees well, and while he may not have the most dramatic spinal side bend, he still arrives in a strong driver position.

From down the line, his swing becomes even more instructive. Montgomerie combines:

• Some relatively steep arm motion
• Excellent body fall-away in transition
• A degree of early extension that helps shallow the club
• A very stable, controlled release pattern

This is a great lesson because many golfers assume every elite driver must look textbook in every segment of the swing. That is not true. Golf swings are often about matching pieces. If one part is steeper, another part has to provide the shallowing.

Montgomerie’s release is especially important. Players who early extend and steepen the arms often struggle with face control, but he manages the clubface well through impact. In other words, his compensations are highly skilled and consistent.

Why this matters for you:

You do not need a “perfect” backswing or transition to drive it well. But you do need a functional blend of movements that gets the club delivered shallow enough, with a stable enough face, to launch the ball efficiently.

The non-classic example: Rocco Mediate

Rocco Mediate provides a useful contrast because he does not show the same classic body shape through impact. Instead of keeping the upper body back behind the lower body, he tends to get more stacked over the lead side—closer to what you might see in a wedge swing.

This is exactly what many amateurs do when they over-apply the idea of “weight forward.” They slide and lunge onto the front side, then wonder why the driver feels steep and inconsistent.

So how does a player like Rocco still hit the driver effectively enough to compete? He has to create his shallowing elsewhere.

From down the line, you can see that he uses a very strong arm-and-wrist shallowing pattern. He unhinges the club aggressively and uses a lot of ulnar deviation—the motion of letting the clubhead drop and shallow through the release. He also shows a notable amount of bowing or “motorcycle” type wrist action to help manage the clubface.

In simple terms, if the body does not provide enough shallowing, the arms and wrists must do much more of the work.

This is an important concept because it explains why there are exceptions to the classic look. The laws of physics still apply. The club still has to shallow. If the body does not create that shape, the player must find it through the hands and arms.

Two ways to shallow the driver

Across these examples, the big lesson is that there are two primary sources of shallowing:

1. Shallowing from the body

• Lead-side bracing
• Upper body staying back or falling away
• Side bend and pelvic tilt
• Arms extending more horizontally

2. Shallowing from the arms and wrists

• Unhinging the club properly
• Ulnar deviation in the release
• Managing clubface alignments with bowing or stable wrist conditions
• Letting the clubhead work under rather than over the plane

Most golfers will benefit from using some of both. If you rely only on body motion, you may not have enough delivery skill. If you rely only on the hands and wrists, timing becomes difficult. The strongest pattern is usually a blend: shallow some in transition, then continue delivering that shallowness through the release.

What older golfers should take from the Champions Tour

The encouraging message from these swings is that age does not automatically ruin your driving. You may lose some speed, and you may not move like a 25-year-old, but you can still build a highly functional driver motion.

What tends to change with age is how you create the shape, not whether you need the shape.

As spinal mobility decreases, especially side bend, many players need to rely more on:

• Pelvic tilt
• Lead-leg bracing
• Knee action
• Smoother sequencing rather than violent movement

The geometry still holds up. Good drivers still find a way to get the lower body ahead, keep the upper body back enough, and send the club through on a shallow-enough path to launch the ball properly.

How to apply this in practice

If you want to use these ideas on the range, start by changing what you are trying to feel through impact. Do not focus only on “getting forward.” Instead, work on creating a delivery where the lead side braces while the chest stays back enough to let the club sweep through.

1. Film your swing face-on with the driver. Check whether your upper body is lunging over the lead leg too early.
2. Rehearse a braced finish. Feel your lead leg firming up while your chest stays tilted slightly away from the target.
3. Let the arms extend outward. Through impact, feel the arms working more toward the target line rather than only down into the ground.
4. Add some wrist delivery awareness. If you are still steep, learn to unhinge the club more effectively so the clubhead can shallow into the strike.
5. Blend the motions. The goal is not an exaggerated body tilt or a handsy flip. It is a coordinated pattern where body and club support each other.

A helpful checkpoint is your follow-through. If you consistently finish in a strong, classic driver shape—with the body appearing angled away from the target rather than stacked on top of the lead foot—you are probably organizing the swing well. If your finish looks more like a steep iron shot, you may be asking the driver to do a job it was not designed to do.

The Champions Tour proves that efficient driving is less about youthful flash and more about sound geometry. If you learn how to create shallowness with the body, the arms, or ideally both, you can keep your driver effective even as your body evolves.