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Proper Tee Height | Optimize Distance and Control
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In this video, you'll see the importance of using different tee height positions with your driver. You'll also learn how axis tilt can help you start launching the ball higher for longer drives or hit low penetrating bullets that go right through the wind.
- Tee it high let it fly - Ball teed above the face. More secondary axis tilt needed.
- Stock shot - Ball half on the face, half above it. Normal RST swing.
- Low bullet - Ball teed in the middle of the face. Lead shoulder stays low.
Hey, Rotary Swing Golfers.
Welcome back.
I'm your instructor, Chris Tyler, And today we're going to be talking about how.
Tee height and the position of your spine can help you optimize your distance and also get you more control in the golf course.
Okay, guys, So before we start getting into the mechanics and how, it's going to be important to control the position of your spine in the hitting area, I want to go ahead and discuss the three different tee heights that I like to use when on the golf course here.
And this first tee height, you're going to notice that the ball is pretty much completely above the face.
Now, this is the ball that I call tee it high and let it fly.
And these are going to be ones that we're really trying to get the ball to be in a very high launch condition, with very low spin.
I like to play this shot on days that there's not tons of wind, or if it's a hole that's playing dead downwind.
We want to really kind of tee it high, let it fly, take advantage of the wind.
Also, another good time to use it is if you have some crosswind on the golf course.
And you can use the wind to your advantage to help get the ball back into play and further down the fairway.
This is another one that you can use this particular tee height on.
This next ball position, this is what I call the stock shot position.
Okay, this is where I have about half the ball on the face and half the ball above the face.
Now, what does a stock shot mean?
Well, a stock shot is typically, if you were to hit a pitching wedge, a total of 130 yards.
That was your maximum value to it, where you didn't have to swing too hard and you didn't have to take anything off it.
It went 130 yards.
That would be what we consider a stock shot.
Well, the same thing with a driver.
We want to be able to have a go-to shot in your round.
I'm not going to be making any adjustments to my setup with this particular tee height.
All I'm really doing is trying to make a good golf swing, get the golf ball in play.
So, this is what I call my stock shot ball.
This low ball right here, this is what I call my low ball bullet ball.
Now, this is a ball that's great for really windy conditions.
If you're playing a hole that's dead back into the wind, this is going to help you flight your golf ball down quite a bit.
This is also good for those players that are starting to try to work the golf ball left to right off the tee.
If you have a hole that's set up to where you're going to need to start curving the ball or hitting a cut shot, this is a great way to start to do that.
So, you'll notice that this ball position on the club face is pretty low.
It's pretty much what I have just right in the center of the face is really where I tee it up.
So, again, we have the tee it high, let it fly, we've got the stock shot, and then we've got the low bolt bullet here.
Okay, so let's go ahead and talk about the position of the spine now, how it's going to affect each one of these shots, so you can start optimizing the distance and start optimizing that control.
Okay, so now that we've looked at the various tee heights here, Let's talk about the various spine positions that you're going to be working with with each one of these balls.
So that you have a good understanding of what you're going to be looking for.
To help get these things launched properly.
So, with the ball that we had first here, that one we were going to call tee it high and let it fly, we're going to be trying to promote a lot of secondary axis tilt.
Now, what is axis tilt?
A lot of you may be asking right now.
Well, axis tilt is just simply the position or the angle to my spine here from a face-on perspective.
Okay, so at a dress, we like to have our spine just inside of our lead knee, and for a stock shot, you'll notice that our spine just shifts just outside of our lead knee.
Now, what does axis tilt do to your golf swing?
Well, what it does is it helps shallow your golf swing out quite a bit.
So, what I mean there is if you turn down the line here, okay, and I were to lean my spine away from the target, you're going to notice that the shaft plane lays flat here.
Now, why is that important to your golf swing?
Well, it's going to help get your golf ball, especially with a tee it high, let it fly condition, it's going to help you get the golf club on more of an ascending blow rather than a descending blow.
And a lot of these drivers these days are set up for very high launch conditions with very little ball spin.
So, what we're going to be trying to do with the tee it high, Let it fly.
Ball is.
We're going to be trying to promote more secondary axis tilt by widening our base a little bit and then moving our ball position a little bit more forward.
Because when we start to shift our pelvis forward over to our lead side with a wider base, we keep our head quiet, you're going to notice that your spine wants to lean back a little bit more here.
Again, that's going to help create more of an ascending blow rather than a descending blow.
Now, with what we're going to do under a stock shot format is we're not going to go to a wider base here.
What we're going to do is we're going to just try to keep all of those things that we've worked through with RST as simple as possible here.
We're going to go to our normal stance width, we're going to have the ball position off of our left ear, and we're not going to try to promote any more secondary axis tilt.
We would just promote it just outside the lead knee here.
Now, with the low boat ball here, What we're going to be trying to do is we're going to try to keep our lead shoulder very low in transition.
We're almost going to be trying to take out some of that secondary axis tilt.
Now, so just as the opposite here, if I were to lean my spine away, if my spine were to feel like it was moving towards the target here, That would help get the golf club coming down a little bit steeper and make this shot a little bit easier for me to hit.
Because we're going to be trying to hit down on it quite a bit here.
So again, the tee at high, let it fly ball, we're going to widen our base up a little bit here.
We're going to promote a little bit more secondary axis tilt by keeping our head back.
Number two ball, the stock ball, we're just going to keep all of the RST fundamentals the same here.
Proper stance width, golf ball position off the left ear.
And we're going to just try to keep our spine just outside of our lead knee, down in the hitting area.
And then this low boat bullet ball, We're going to try to keep our left shoulder much lower down in the hitting area to keep our spine a little bit more vertical.
That way we can hit down on the golf ball and be able to flight it lower, be able to control that spin, and also be able to keep the ball down through the wind so it's boring through the wind.
And hopefully you guys can get some good usage out of this.
Okay, so let's go ahead and take a look at the high launch ball here.
You're going to notice that that ball is almost completely above the face.
I've gone ahead and widened my base here quite a bit.
Ball position is going to be quite a bit more forward with where we would normally play it.
Okay, what I'm going to try to do is make sure when I come down to the hitting area, I'm going to keep my head really quiet when I'm shifting my weight.
So I'm going to promote a little bit more secondary tilt.
We're going to try to really get that thing launching.
There we go, did pretty good there.
Okay, all we're going to do is try to promote just enough tilt just to have it outside the knee.
So all of our other RST fundamentals stay the same.
There you go.
And now the low bolt bullet ball.
This is the one where we're going to try to make sure our left shoulder is going to stay much lower in transition.
Take out some of that tilt so we can really flight that golf ball down.
Get it underneath the wind.
There you go.
Alright guys, so now that you've seen my different tee heights here, We've talked a little bit about how axis tilt is going to ultimately affect the way the golf club enters the hitting area.
It can help you start creating more of an ascending blow rather than a descending blow.
So if you've been struggling with either creating too much secondary axis tilt and haven't really had a solution on how to fix that, We've got an absolutely fantastic video that a lot of golfers get great success with, and that's called the level shoulders drill.
And that's in the downswing section.
Okay, so level shoulders video.
It's going to teach you what you want your shoulders to be able to look like down into the hitting area.
So that you don't start to get the club shallowing out too much and then you can start to compress the golf ball properly.
Also check out the video called the driver setup adjustments video.
That's another great video that talks to you about the sciences of why.
We make these little, minor setup adjustments to help get that golf ball launching in the air.
And then also the importance of launch.
The importance of launch is another video that's going to talk to you about the sciences and why.
We want to get that golf ball really launching in the air in certain circumstances on the golf course.
Now let's get out there guys, let's play some great golf.
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