- Welcome to Naples Florida, I'm Adam Bazalgette.
Two-Time PGA Teacher Of The Year Award Winner
and Founder of Scratch Golf Academy.
Today's subject's a great one.
How to crush your drives.
(upbeat music)
So how to crush your drives.
Well, we'll look at some things that contribute
to club head speed to show you
an interesting mistake I've made in my swing
I discovered recently over the years,
that's helped me with this.
I think it'll help you.
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Scratchgolfacademy.com is my home website.
I have a full course there in driving.
A to Z or you can learn about that in terms of strategy,
swing techniques, et cetera.
So I hope your check that out.
Okay, let's get started.
So of course there's two main components to distance,
how you can crash that ball, and that's speed, number one.
Speed in the club.
That's the one we're really gonna look at all today.
The other one of course is solid hit
and that would be centeredness of club face contact.
And with the driver, some more specifics
about angle of attach et cetera.
I've done other videos on that so let's leave that alone.
Let's also, for this video,
can it take for granted the things we'd see
in terms of swing playing grip
and just some of the basic fundamentals,
and let's look at one area here
That'll really help you create speed
and it's an area where I see people make a lot of mistakes.
I'll show you a mistake I've made over the years,
I found out about on video a few years ago
that I think will help you.
But as we get started, we're gonna look at the body motion
and how it affects the club.
Now let me just say this before you get cranking here.
I don't care how fast you think you can turn
your hips or whatever
That alone is not enough,
nearly enough to hit the ball a long way.
It's only when the body creates exponential club head speed
that you really see the results so very briefly,
let's have a look at a couple of great players,
how they start the club.
How the body moves as they start the club.
Then we'll circle back and kinda get to the meat of it,
how to create speed in the downswing.
So there's Jason Day, and you can see
as he starts back, you watch his trunk more than his arms,
and you can really see that it's that pivoting motion there,
that is causing his arms to rise off the ground.
There's nothing snatched up in the air about the arms there.
And just for a classic, the Late Great Payne Stewart.
Not it his knickers in this event here,
But again, a really nice view of how the coiling of the body
causes the arms to react
and those arms don't fly up in the air, minus the coil there
as you get started.
Okay so once we've gotten a sense
of how the body influences the arms going back,
the thing we really wanna focus on here in this video,
is how you store power coming down,
and a little bit how you release it at the bottom.
Let me show you on video,
not just a couple of great players doing that,
but I'll show you myself hitting a couple of drives.
A drive and a practice swing.
Something really interesting I found out
that I was doing wrong, and I've subsequently found out
that almost everybody I've tested on this, does wrong.
Check it out.
So before I show you myself,
let's look at someone
who really, really does this well.
John Daly, obviously one of the longest,
most gifted hitters there is.
Now he's, bear in mind, he's, bear in mind, he is ultra,
ultra flexible so that does make a difference.
But I want you to watch his legs here on the left.
And watch them, they're in motion there
and watch how long it takes
for the club head to react to that.
The club head actually keeps going back
and if you look at his arms,
they just don't do anything as he changes direction.
And finally, they get pulled into position
and what a lot of power that creates.
Watch him here.
He's with a hybrid here but you can get the picture
and again, you watch how soft
his left shoulder and left arm are,
stay through the transition.
And how he can change direction,
without the suspicion of trying
to really jerk that club down.
He's so patient up there and that stores ton of power.
Fred Couples obviously one of the greatest.
I think anybody would like to swing like Freddy.
And Freddy's another great example
and if you watch a little bit more up in here,
you just watch out patient he is with those arms.
There goes his lower body
and you look at his arms just staying right there
and that extra split-second gives him that critical
kinematics sequence of lower body, then trunk and then arms
and of course, finally, club.
Now if we look at me for a second here.
Let's put me up there hitting the driver
and let's put me with a practice swing.
Now this practice swing on the right
is a full dress rehearsal practice swing.
This is trying to rip it through there
with any kind of speed I might create in a drive.
So if I get myself up to about there, let's say,
give or take, that's about synchronized,
and I'm gonna play these at the same rate,
and you'll see that they change direction
about at the same time,
and about at the same order if you like,
give it take a couple of frames.
Now, a few years ago, I was struggling with my driver.
I came in and filmed myself
and then just trying to fix things,
I wanted to film a practice swing
and see what that would look like.
And I did this same test with no particular sense
of what might happen and I'm telling you,
when I synchronized them,
I was still at the top
and I had gotten down that far with the actual ball.
It was unbelievable to me when I saw,
in comparison with my practice swing,
how strong the urge in there was to yank those arms down,
and basically just fire at the golf ball.
I was pretty shocked by it
and I've subsequently tested with some other players,
and some good players too,
and that, to one degree or another,
tends to hold true.
So it's a lesson for all of us.
You could do this probably with our cell phone
if you have the right app.
Don't rush those arms coming down.
Because I'm telling you,
when I did that test and I wound up with that look,
when I forward-wound both swings down nearer the bottom
of the swing, I had just as much speed in the practice swing
as I did in the real swing.
It hadn't netted me or anything,
but it really cost me the ability
to create this good sequence
and probably, in fact, cost me some power.
All right, hopefully that's a good mental picture for you.
Hopefully you're getting a sense
of how the body can load power out into the club.
But let me touch on one thing here
that's really, really important.
You've got a transfer energy out of to club.
It's fine to load it.
I see a lot of people, when they first worked on this,
their arms just stay at Infinitum, way back there.
They don't catch up and the speed
doesn't transfer out to the club head
so now that you've got a sense of how to load it,
and I've touched on this and much more detail
in other videos and that whole driver course
back at Scratch Golf,
but let me give you a good visual picture,
and this is something you can do right here at home
if you're at your house.
And this has really helped some people
with this in a nice, simple way.
So we've shown you how your arms,
if you like are almost like, are almost like big heavy ropes
kind of just reacting to your body.
If you picture your hands dipped in water,
or paint, or something like that,
if you had to use your body to spatter water or paint
across the ground in front of where the golf ball would be,
that is an excellent mental picture
of how to transfer energy out to the golf club.
So arms respond to body,
arms respond to body, but then use your body, stabilize it
and snap the water off or speckle the imaginary paint
on the ground over there.
That will see to it, that the clubs popping at the bottom
and you're really getting the energy that you need.
I think if you'll do these things,
you will really, really see a distance
in your club head speed and of course,
then your ball speed and the distance you hit the ball.
I hope that helps you with how to crush your drives.
Would love to get a comment from you.
Maybe something you want me to touch on in the future?
Please subscribe to the channel.
Would love to get you more of this free content
and of course, scratchgolfacademy.com us my home website.
I have a full course in driving there.
Hope you'll consider checking that out.
Thank you.