- Well, hi folks, Adam Bazalgette,
Two-Time PGA Teacher Of The Year award winner,
back here at the beautiful club
at Mediterra in Naples, Florida.
Today's subject in our golf driver tips,
how close should you stand to the ball.
(upbeat music)
(golf club whooshes)
So as we look at golf driver tips,
how close should you stand to the ball?
Well, we'll look at some great players.
Some of them did it different ways.
Trying to give you some averages
as to what you should look for,
give you some ideas as to what are the advantages
of being further from it.
What are the advantages to being closer to it?
And at the end of the video, the final segment,
I'm gonna show you a great little drill,
to sort of self-coach, and it's an easy way to determine
kinda how your arms are hanging,
and how far from the ball you are.
If you like the video, please subscribe to the channel.
Lots more content coming your way, we hope,
and of course, ScratchGolfAcademy.com is my home website.
Let's get started.
So here's two really great golfers:
Arnold Palmer, obviously needs no introduction
there on the left; Jim Furyk on the right,
very, very different looks.
Now, look how much closer Jim stands to the ball there
than Mr. Palmer did, and yet, they were both,
obviously, great golfers, so let's have a look here.
Arnold Palmer,
no doubts about it, with all his wins,
easily delivers the club well.
But equally so does Jim Furyk.
So does it really make a difference?
Well, if you can deliver the golf club
down the target line and hit it in the middle
of the clubface, obviously it doesn't.
But clearly, there are differences there,
and they have consequences, so let's look at those.
(golf club whooshes)
That's my driver swing.
We've seen two great players there that did it differently.
What are some of the reasons?
What are some of the advantages and disadvantages
of standing further and closer to the ball?
Well, I would say generally,
the further you stand from the ball,
there's a little more freedom,
a little more space, certainly.
And generally it would be easier to round your swing out
a little bit if you stand slightly further from the ball.
If you stand really close to it,
now Jim Furyk's super close to it,
unless you're pretty darn flexible,
and pretty coordinated to get in there,
mostly pretty flexible and thin, to be frank with you,
it's gonna be hard to get in a good plane, in a good slot,
to hit the shot.
What that does do for you though,
is by standing a little closer,
there's a little more support for the arms at impact.
The body and the arms can kinda squeeze up together
a little bit more so,
you gotta sorta find out what's right for you.
I would say generally though, if you're a thicker,
stronger, wider-bodied sort of person,
you don't wanna get too close to it
because there's just not gonna be enough room
to get that thing in there close to you.
But just because you're thinly built
doesn't mean you should necessarily do what Furyk does.
You may do better off doing a little bit more
of what Arnold Palmer did.
Have a look at a couple more players.
You'll see what I mean.
So does physique always dictate how far
you should stand from the ball?
Well, clearly not.
That's Kevin Stadler on the left,
terrific player, son of the great Craig Stadler,
thickly built guy.
Over there on the right's Aaron Baddeley,
one of the fittest and slimmest guys on the PGA Tour,
and to me, he's standing at least as far away from it
as is Kevin, so it's an influence, but it does not dictate
how far you should stand from the ball.
So what's the right spot for you?
How far should you be from the ball?
Well, you've gotta fiddle with it a little bit.
What gives you, personally, with your body style,
the best combination of freedom
and ability to get on a good plane,
while also feeling plenty of support,
arms fairly near the body at impact.
You don't wanna experiment too much.
Here's a little tip for you, by the way.
I give golf lessons all the time, that's what I do;
I'm a golf instructor.
So I'm talking to people a lot about their games,
and all of us, it's just human nature,
me included, I hate to say sometimes,
have this sort of desire to have a quantum breakthrough
in our golf game, to suddenly take a leap
and sort of have it down pat,
or have a big period of improvement.
And what we so often do, is we look at someone
that's having success, typically on TV,
someone that does something that's really an idiosyncrasy.
Let's say Arnold Palmer stood a long way from the golf ball,
and we think wait a minute, let me try that;
that might work.
Had someone come in the other day,
Bryson DeChambeau has all his clubs the same length,
guy's about a 20 handicap, I think,
if I got my clubs cut the same length
who knows what I could do.
Forget that stuff.
It's never the right place to start,
is to look at the idiosyncrasy and think if I copy that,
I'll get a little bit of the magic out of the results.
They're usually successful despite the idiosyncrasy,
not picking on Bryson's clubs or anything like that,
I'm just saying as a general rule.
So start in the middle.
Start with something pretty foundational and standard,
and I'll show you what that is with some players
here in just a moment.
And as you'll see, it's a little bit different
for the iron than the driver.
Start from there and work away from that.
And be patient and put the work in.
So my relationship to the golf ball,
kind of middle of the road, for a driver,
just a little bit, maybe, outside my shoulder line.
(golf club whooshes)
And for me that seems to work okay.
That's kind of what I've worked out.
Have a look at what I think is standard for great players.
Well to me, they don't come any more standard
than Adam Scott; you probably feel the same way.
Who wouldn't wanna have his golf swing?
There he is hitting a driver.
His hands a little outside his shoulder line.
I think that's pretty standard; that's what you see mostly.
And yeah, I think it's a little different
with the driver to an iron, where his wrists, if you like,
or hands, are pretty much right underneath his shoulder.
He's a little bit more bent over there, obviously;
the shaft is shorter.
But that, to me, is a very, very common look.
The shorter iron's what you see on the right,
maybe a little further out for the long clubs,
and the driver are pushed just a little bit more out.
Now let's have a look at say,
why don't we grab a player here, who to me,
has had as little coaching as anybody would have had
in the world of golf, and that would be,
doesn't need it either by the way,
and that would be Fred Couples, let's say.
So here's Fred Couples in his Senior Tour days,
so he's doing what pretty much comes naturally to him,
and I think it would be fair to say that although he's maybe
a little outside his shoulder line there with the iron,
it's definitely a case where his driver is a wee bit further
away from him than the iron.
I think that's standard.
I would say that's natural; that's what I'd be looking for.
So at the beginning introduction,
I mentioned to you I'd show you a neat little drill
that you could kinda self-coach
as to how far you are from the ball.
We've used this reference, hands being under the shoulders,
a little bit further out, possibly, for a driver.
Here's the drill.
Take your set up, get nice and comfortable,
then just let your right hand come off the club
and completely relax; let your arm go limp.
Now mine's hanging inside of where it was on the club.
That means it's hanging underneath my shoulder.
That means my grip is a little outside my shoulder line.
If you're up on an iron like that, if you let go,
it should probably hang right in line with the grip.
You gotta make sure you're relaxed with that arm though,
but at least, it doesn't necessary tell you
about your posture, but it certainly tells you
about how your arms are hanging in relation to the club,
which is primarily what we've been talking about.
So make that a habit once in a while.
So I hope that helps you in our golf driver tips,
how close should you stand to the ball.
If you like this video, please subscribe to the channel.
We have a lot of content there,
have full courses in every aspect of the game
including one on driving at my home website
ScratchGolfAcademy.com.
I appreciate your interest in the videos and your attention.