Optimizing your Driver Swings for more Distance and Control

Sorry, you need to be a member to access this video.
You Are Just Seconds Away - Become a member here!
Already a member? Log in now

Buy This Webinar

In this webinar, Chris Tyler demonstrates how to optimize your driver swings for more distance and control.


Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back.

Happy Saturday to most of you.

Some of you, it's already Sunday.

So hopefully everybody's having a wonderful weekend so far.

Hopefully everybody can hear me all right.

I was doing some mic testing this morning and I think I got it right.

I see Master Instructor Craig Morrow is joining us this morning.

Welcome, Craig.

Right and early this morning.

Good morning, good morning.

Welcome, John.

Welcome, Donald.

Welcome, Barbara.

It looks like we have a pretty large group of people coming in today.

It looks like there's a lot of late comers or people are doing things on their Saturday mornings.

Maybe they're out playing golf.

Today, I had to make a little last minute adjustment.

I had every intention of today's workshop being outdoors so I could show you a lot of how this stuff works.

So today we had to make a little adjustment because in Florida, it's raining and cloudy and unfortunately, camera equipment does not work very well in the rain.

So we're going to do it in here.

We can still get a lot of stuff done today.

We're going to talk about how to make some simple adjustments with your setup.

Also, tee height and how to start taking advantage of certain things in your golf swing that could help you unlock a little bit more power, a little bit more speed, which is kind of fun.

I'm going to show you guys exactly how I do things personally.

So hopefully everybody's having a wonderful, wonderful start to their weekend so far.

Hey, David, how are you?

Welcome, Helen.

Good morning, everybody.

Hopefully everybody is doing fantastic.

I'm going to give it just a couple minutes so that people can come into the room.

I know that there's some people that might be a little bit slow.

Aloha, Mitchell.

Welcome, sir.

Hopefully you're doing well.

Today's a fun one.

We get to talk about the big dog, letting the big dog eat, right?

So for those of you that are just joining me, you can see that we're indoors today.

We were going to be outdoors, but unfortunately, the rain gods didn't work in my favor, which is not ideal, but I'd rather be in here not ruining the camera equipment.

So hopefully everybody's doing well.

Just a couple more minutes to let people get in here and then we're going to get started.

We're going to be talking about how to hit this thing with some authority and stop powder puffing it all over the golf course, right?

We're going to talk about how to get some speed out of this thing.

You'll be very surprised on how a couple of little small adjustments go a long ways here.

We're going to talk about stance width.

We're going to talk about T height.

We are going to talk about how the stance width ultimately affects your spine and what you're going to be looking for down through the hitting area.

And then I'm also going to show you guys a simple little drill that you guys can start doing this weekend to start helping.

Increase your club head speed at the bottom of the swing arc, where it matters the most.

So, and believe it or not, I'm going to let you guys use your right hand and right arm.

How about that?

Good morning, Patrick.

He loves hitting some bombs.

I love it.

So I love it.

So hopefully everybody's having a great start to their weekend.

I see a few more people are getting settled.

One or two more minutes and then we are going to get started with today's optimizing webinar.

So if you guys have any questions at this point, feel free to ask some questions.

So I see Barbara's telling Craig, giving some Craig, Craig some love.

Has anybody got a chance to play some golf this weekend?

Anybody playing golf this weekend at all?

Everybody's just really quiet.

Everybody's just ready to get into it, huh?

Ron, welcome, sir.

Springfield, Illinois.

I heard you guys got a little bit of snow recently.

So you're going to be off the golf course for a little bit.

Don playing in two hours.

Well, hopefully the stuff that you hear today, You can start trying to take out on the golf course and make some of this stuff work for you.

Because I like this topic a lot today.

Because it's one of those things that you're going to have a little bit of freedom on your end to be able to play around with some things, right?

So you're going to see exactly how I do things personally.

I'm going to show you the shot that I use the least.

I'm going to show you the shots that I use the most.

And I'm going to show you how I adjust myself throughout the round of golf just to help optimize and help take advantage of my lack of speed right now, right?

So I'm not getting a chance to play in practice as much.

So, you know, when I was playing a lot of golf, when I was playing full time, I was usually swinging right around the 115 to 118 mark.

I've never really been a fast, fast springer of the club, but that was moving it, right?

That was just above the bottom of the tour average.

Right now, the tour average is at 113.

So, which is moving it and grooving it.

But when I'm now not playing as much golf and my swing speed, it's going to be like the 110, 111 mark.

Well, I still want to be able to hit the golf ball far enough.

And just making a few adjustments.

And being able to capitalize on modern day technology is a wonderful thing.

Now, you guys are going to be probably laughing at home when I show you how old my driver is.

Maybe some of you can see this.

Maybe some of you can't.

This is a Cleveland.

If anybody knows exactly what model this is, I will buy you a hot dog and a Coke.

So this is a very old driver that I will not get rid of.

It's actually, I think it's 12 years old.

I was on staff with Cleveland for a number of years.

And even with all the modern day stuff that comes out, I've tested everything as far as shaft combos, head combos.

This is the driver that fits my swing the most.

I don't spin this at all.

So I keep my spin rate really low and I have very good launch angles with it.

So I'm not going to just change just because TaylorMade is trying to sell me something new every other year, right?

Which I know can be a little bit frustrating for you guys at home because you guys fall victim to the marketing stuff that they go out there and they preach, right?

That's what the PGA show is all about, right?

The PGA show just came into town recently and that used to be really closed down just to vendors.

And now they've opened it up for the public so that you guys can go in there and start sampling some of the new stuff that the tour players are using.

But in all reality, it's not really changing that much year over year.

In fact, if you were to go out and watch me hit this driver versus some of the new stuff that's come out, you would find that I'm not getting any advantage from it.

So it's not me being cheap.

It's just I go with what works, right?

And so I use a very heavy shaft.

This is a Miyazaki Kasala 72 gram X-Flex that's tipped just a fraction.

And so how we were able to come to that determination with this driver was me being on a launch monitor.

So if you have a chance to be going out and get fitted for your driver, then make sure that you go to a reputable club fitter, okay?

I'm not just talking about somebody that sits at a store that is there geared to sell you something, okay?

It's very important that you understand that there are massive amounts of heads available to you and there are massive amounts of shafts.

And a lot of times, equipment can actually work for you, all right?

You don't want your equipment working against you.

And I think you'll find that a lot of people make.

The same mistake that I've made in the past with some of my irons is that I've gone too heavy and too stiff with my shafts.

Like even this one would be considered too heavy for me at this point, but I'm still not getting rid of it because I hit it really good, okay?

But I have noticed that my iron shafts, when I went back to a reputable fitter, they were much too heavy for me.

And so we always find ourselves kind of falling victim to that.

And that's something that, you know, I know it's hard to find somebody in your area that's a reputable club fitter, but we do have possibly some recommendations in your area.

So if you want, at the end of the session, you want to kind of say where you're at and if you want to go see a fitter, fine.

TrackMan's a great device to be able to have during the sessions.

I know that Mizuno has these new things that they can kind of hook onto your shafts.

And they can actually see some things with kick points in the shafts.

So they can see how you're loading it.

So that is not a launcher, but very close guess.

So is that the one that Payne Stewart used to be in the open?

No, not quite that old.

So, but funny one.

So Persimmon Head?

Yeah, it's a Persimmon Head.

I was Club Champion.

So Club Champion, I will say that I've heard nothing but good things.

I have not gone through the experience there.

I just had a student in last week that went through Club Champion and showed up with all brand new PXG stuff, shafts that I hadn't even heard of at this point.

And they, I feel like they were fit pretty well for him the way he hit the golf ball.

So definitely I've heard some good stuff about them.

I'm not going to comment any further.

I know that when I was playing full-time, we had this guy in Orange City, Florida.

We called him like the mad scientist.

And this guy could do, Like this is when spining a shaft became a thing.

And he could do all kinds of things for your golf clubs and set you up to where the clubs weren't ultimately working against you.

But a lot of the modern day technology is not going to be working against you anyways.

Just you'll find that shaft combo and head combo, if it's set up properly, can help you optimize and get you a little bit more distance.

And that's what we're here to talk about today.

Is some adjustments that you're going to be working through or working on that you can use on the golf course.

And so let's just go ahead and get into that now.

And so first thing I want to do is I want to talk about tee height, okay?

I use three very specific tee heights.

My first tee height that you're going to see me use is under a stock shot.

And this stock shot is one that I use very little on the golf course.

I'll use it when I'm trying to get a golf ball into a really, really tight position.

I'm not trying to take advantage of like a par five or short par four.

Like let's just say it's a really narrowed up par four where I've got trees on both sides, I've got trouble, and I'm trying to get a ball where I'm trying to squeeze it out into play.

And when I say squeeze it, I'm going to try to hit a little bit more of a left to right shot there.

That's the shot that I feel comfortable with under the gun.

But the other two shots that I'm going to be showing you here in just a little bit are going to be erroring on, you're going to see that they're going to move right to left.

So what I do with tee height, and this is a common question, is when I'm trying to hit that stock shot, again, this is the shot that I'm using the least in a round, is I'm going to have the tee height where the middle of the ball and the middle of the face are lined up, okay?

So that's a stock shot.

Now, as far as setup is concerned, what I'll do with my setup is I will use exactly a seven or an eight iron setup or a pitching wedge setup.

I will stay two inches outside of neutral.

I will have the ball position off of the left ear.

You're not going to see any changes here as far as this shot is concerned.

What you will see though is that when I'm releasing the club is instead of letting the toe rotate to where it's toe up or toe left, is I'll hang onto the face just ever so slightly.

Now, when you tee the golf ball a little bit lower like this, okay?

What it tends to do at a subconscious level is it forces you to try to go down and get it.

So it steepens your angle of attack a little bit.

So again, the ball is going to come off a little bit lower.

And when you hold onto the face a little bit through the hitting area, then that tends to make the ball cut a little bit.

So that's a shot that I use, again, very seldomly.

If I play 10 rounds of golf, you'll probably see me hit it twice, okay?

But I want to address that because again, you can set up in a stock shot format and still be able to produce really, really good results, really good, consistent bottom of the swing arc results.

And in fact, I think there's one person that does this better than anybody in the world.

And that is Adam Scott.

If you go look at Adam Scott, he actually has a stock driver swing that you'll see him use just like I was talking about here, where you look at his ball position, it's off his left ear.

But then you want to see him ramp it up a little bit.

You'll start progressively seeing the ball position move forward.

And then you start seeing his stance width get wider, which leads me into the next point.

So the shot that I use the most is where you're going to see me tee the ball up.

Half of the ball is going to be on the face and half the ball is going to be above the face.

So I'm a half on, half off kind of guy, okay?

This is the shot that you'll see me use the most in a round.

And the adjustments that I make for this when the ball is teed up a little bit higher is now I'm going to start setting up just a fraction wider.

I'm not going to go to my widest stance.

So if I'm two inches outside of neutral right now, okay, what you're going to see me do is get about an inch and a half wider on both sides.

This is not something that is going to be ironclad across the board for all of you at home, okay?

This is something that you're going to want to play around with.

And so the next piece that I'm going to make an adjustment to is I'm going to make an adjustment to my ball position.

Now, I am very, very careful with ball position here.

I don't want to start moving it way too far forward with my stance width being the way that it is, okay?

Just because that's something that we've heard.

When you start moving the ball position more forward in your stance, you have to remember that the path that the club is going to be working on is going to be more left, okay?

And so you have to make adjustments for that.

And so I try to keep the left turn out of the path here because I'm trying to hit big draws at this point.

Now, the widening of the stance width, what it does for us is when I load to my right side, so when I shift and turn into my right side and I start shifting my hips back to the left, if I keep my head and my chest back and behind the golf ball like I'm supposed to, okay?

Then you can see that there's an increase of what we call secondary axis tilt, right?

So you can see that this tilt right here is something that's going to be increased quite a bit versus the stock shot, right?

So if I get to impact in a stock shot format, you're going to see that I have a lot less secondary axis tilt, right?

So I'm going to be more apt to hit down on it.

Now, one thing that you probably don't know at this point is that modern day drivers are set up for very high launch, very low ball spin.

It's the only club in your bag that is set up for positive angle of attack.

The only club.

Your three wood, your hybrids, your three iron, your four iron.

Does anybody even carry a three iron anymore?

I do.

I'm old school.

I'd carry a two iron if I could find one, okay?

Every other club in your bag is designed to have negative angle of attack.

Now, positive angle of attack is what we're going to be trying to produce in this swing.

And secondary axis tilt helps you get positive angle of attack.

So when your spine is leaning back, that starts getting the club more on the ascending blow rather than the descending blow, okay?

Now, you've got to be careful with this, right?

If you start getting too much of it, then you can have all kinds of hell break loose here.

You can have your weight hanging out on your right side too much.

So you have to be committed to still shifting your weight.

Now, one of the things that was a little bit baffling to me is for those of you that have studied trackman numbers, okay?

And you look at the PGA Tour across the board is that you're going to look at the PGA Tour average right now as we stand is down 1.

3 degrees in angle of attack, which is mind -blowing to me.

Why?

Well, because if you look at the driving range when they're all out there getting ready to play golf, what do you see on the driving range?

Well, you'll see everybody with trackman or you'll see everybody with GC Quad or you'll see FlightScope out there.

So they have this data right there in front of them.

Now, that doesn't mean when you look at an average that everybody out there is doing it.

There is a very good chunk of guys out there that are moving the golf ball and they're on a very, very positive angle of attack.

So what we've typically seen with people that are optimizing, and this is not something that's static, this is something that can change from one person to the next, is four to six degrees up is going to be optimal.

So four to six degrees up.

Now, I, again, am one of those people that likes to be able to, because I'm not swinging as fast, I like to get the golf ball going up in the air.

I know it scares a lot of you to see it go really, really high like that because you feel like you're going to be losing some distance.

But if you maximize the launch and you get the ball spin really low, then the ball carries a long ways.

And so that's the shot that you're going to see me use the most in a round is that I'm going to start working to widen the base up a little bit.

I'm going to have the ball position move slightly forward.

Now, this is something that I want you guys to be able to play around with.

So if stock shot is off my left ear and I widen my base up about an inch and a half on both sides, then I'm going to start moving the ball closer to the left end step.

And I want you to try to hit some balls from this position just to get comfortable with it, just to see what it's like.

Now, if you notice that maybe the launch angle is a little bit too high, then you can start coming in on your base a little bit.

You can move your ball position slightly back.

If you notice that your path is turning a little bit to the left because your ball is starting a little bit more left, then what you can do is you can start closing off your stance a little bit, right?

What I mean by closing is if I've said I square the target line right now, then you can start closing your stance up a little bit.

Or again, you can make the adjustment of ball position.

This is stuff that I don't want you to think is going to be ironclad across the board.

I want you to be able to play around with it.

That's the whole purpose of today's workshop because, again, some people like to maybe not hit it as high.

Some people maybe don't want to feel as much secondary axis tilt.

But that secondary axis tilt, again, what it's going to do for you, if you look at this from a down the line perspective, if I get up to the top and I lean my spine way, right, you can see how much more shallow the swing plane is.

So you can notice that it's doing two things.

It's creating more of an ascending blow by the time the club gets to the ball.

But it's also shifting the swing plane where?

Well, it's shifting it more into out, which is a little bit more optimal for us to be able to do what?

Well, it's a little bit more optimal for us to hit a draw, right?

I know a lot of you at home are like, I want to hit a straight shot with my irons, maybe a little baby fade, and I want to hit big draws with my driver, right?

I can guarantee it there's a lot of you sitting in this room that want that, right?

So that draw can come from a couple things that you're going to be doing.

Widening the stance and when you shift left, you're going to create more secondary.

Now, there's a big key to this.

If you're going to get a little bit of a draw happening, you have got to be able to stop your upper body from turning through the hitting area and allow your hands and your arms to release.

So a good way to feel that is to start doing some little small reps back and forth where you're going to try to think about the club being.

Toe up on the trail side of my body here, and toe slightly left on the lead side of my body.

Now, when I say slightly left, is like that, okay?

Not like that.

You start grilling that into your practice routines and you're going to call myself or Craig or Chuck and you're going to be like, I'm hitting a snap hook and I suck at golf, okay?

We don't want you to do that.

So it's a toe up to slightly toe left.

Now, What you want to try to feel is that your head and your chest are staying back in behind the ball.

And I'll do this quite a bit back and forth, just to feel, okay?

Then once I've got that burned into my brain, then I start making a full swing here.

So I want you to try that out first before you start trying to widen your base up.

I want you to get to your wrists and your forearms to rotate properly and then start playing around with the width.

Now, The final shot that you'll see me use, and I use this probably four to five times, just depending on par fives or par fours, is I will go full ball above the face.

So we've gone from middle of the face, half on to fully above the face.

Now, this ball fully above the face, this is where you'll see me get my widest.

Now, stance width provides a couple of things for you.

It provides stability, right?

So if I told you that I was going to come knock you over, what are you going to do?

Well, you're going to get really wide and really low to the ground, right?

So this is where you'll see me widen up my stance quite a bit and this is where you don't see me hold anything back, okay?

This is where I will make my biggest, hardest swing.

I won't have the ball position drastically forward my lead foot.

You'll see it be right off the left.

You have to be very cautious when you start going down this road, though, because when you start creating a lot more secondary, if you get too much of an ascending blow, then you can start hitting the belly of the golf ball and you're going to hit a lot of top shots, which is not good for us.

So you have to be willing to be able to play around with the tee height and the stance width as you're going through this.

Now, if it was that simple, then we would all just be out on the golf course just ripping away at it, right?

It's not that simple and so as I said to you guys when we opened up the drill today or opened up the webinar, I should say, is that I was going to give you a simple little drill that you can try out.

So the wrist and forearm rotation is something that I want you to be able to do, But now what I want you to do is I want you to start learning how to time.

Up your right hand and your right arm down through the bottom without getting your shoulders to turn.

And so there's a drill that I did a number of years ago, and I think Chuck also did a drill very similar to this, is where you can take a tee and you can stick it in the ground, okay?

And you can flip the club over.

And what I want you to do is I want you to do some reps where you pull your left hip back and away, but you're going to snap your wrist in the butt end of the club down at the tee.

So you're going to just try to snap everything down there and you're going to try to hear that whoosh sound, right, down at the bottom.

I know these are little small swings, it'll get longer here in a minute, And so what you're feeling there is now how your right hand and right arm are going to function.

Now if you look at this very closely from a down-the-line what you're going to notice is when I'm snapping down, what are you noticing about my shoulders, okay?

When my arm is going down, what do you see in my shoulders?

Well, my shoulders aren't turning open, right?

You see that my shoulders are trying to stay fairly square.

If you're actively trying to turn through the hitting area, then you're going to be very, very late to release the club.

When you're late to release the club, where is your max speed point going to be?

Well, it's going to be somewhere out here, right?

We want max speed to be down here where it matters the most.

So this drill is a multifaceted drill.

It's a drill that's helping you sync up the hips with the downward movement, okay?

It's helping you create snap down at the bottom, and it's helping you stop the number one problem that you guys all deal with, and that is too much body turn when it's time to let the club release.

Now, I know a lot of you at home feel very powerful when you move through your golf swing like this, when you move into finish.

I get it.

It feels, excuse me, it feels powerful, okay?

But you have to remember, as playing professionals, we will move to that position much later than you guys do at home.

As we release the club, then the club is moving us into this finish.

We're not trying to turn through that spot.

We are trying to get on the brakes and let the club go.

That's it.

So that little drill right there, it might seem a little bit hokey, but what it does is it helps you feel what it's like to let the arms start to release down here, and it helps you keep your shoulders from wanting to turn.

Now, how many of you at home have ever done a left arm only golf swing, right?

And you start feeling the freedom for your left arm to swing through, and you feel how fast the club can go.

It feels really fast.

But the second you put your right hand on the club, it feels like it kind of slows things down, right?

Try it out at home.

I do a left arm only swing, and then take your right hand and let it follow along.

It feels like it slows the club down dramatically.

Now, what if I told you that in this drill, you can start using your right hand to help propel the left arm through the hitting area?

And this is where you start getting a lot more speed.

Trust me.

I think that any of you that actually pick up a golf club and do this drill, where you let the thing fly, and I'm going to be very careful in here because I don't want to break things, okay?

You'll start feeling like the club is going really fast down here.

Now, how many of you have seen Freddy Couples, Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson?

Have you seen what their trail hand is doing on the golf club as they're releasing the club?

Their trail hand is coming off the club.

So that just shows you that you don't really need to use it, okay?

It's just there to help transfer speed.

So as you come down in the hitting area now, what you can do is you can start syncing these things up.

Put the left hand back on there, and you can start really kind of flipping the club down here at the bottom.

Now you can hear that I'm really getting it fast down here.

I'm not going to be able to make full swings in here and show you this, but this is a good, simple little drill now that syncs your hips up, gets your shoulders to stop rotating, and gets you to start releasing the club.

It's okay to feel that movement from the right side.

It's not taboo at rotary swing to use your right arm.

If you use your right arm, you just need to use it properly.

That's why the throw the ball drill was such a huge success for us with students that were so lead side dominant, but really kind of stuck in the mud, right?

They were kind of capped out on distance, right?

They've already made these really beautiful, you know, lead side dominant swings that were really free flowing, but they were lacking speed.

And so the right arm in your golf swing when you're first starting out.

This process with us is more or less a conduit that's helping you transfer energy from your body, right?

So as you're going through the swing, you've got these angles between your forearm and your bicep.

You've got an angle here between your wrist and your forearm.

And what's happening is as your body is getting out of the way, those angles are now depleting.

But now, as you start getting really proficient with this, you can start making an active you're going to get a very, very big thrust and speed.

Now, the kicker to that is, is you have to make sure that you don't start sacrificing control, right?

Well, how do I know if I'm sacrificing control?

Well, when you start looking at the club face and maybe it's rotating shut too quickly, your ball is kind of flying a little bit more to the left-hand side, or maybe you create too much resistance in the left hand, or maybe you're starting to get the club head too high, then take the right hand and do less with it, okay?

Get yourself to feel a little bit more of the left arm swinging freely and then get the right hand back on there to try to add some more thrust to it.

I know that's way easier said than done, but the whole purpose of what we're trying to give you here today is some freedom of change within your setup.

Because questions that we get all the time is how high should I tee the ball and how wide should my stance be, right?

So you can widen your stance up based off of what you need on the golf course.

Remember, if you go narrow, right, if you go to that stock shot and you have the ball teed low, your subconscious, the tendency is to be a little bit steeper, hit down on the golf ball a little bit more, okay?

So you're going to see that the ball is going to come out a little bit lower.

You'll see that there's a little bit more spin on the ball.

I, again, will make sure that when I'm hitting that shot specifically that I will keep a little bit of the face rotation off of there.

So what that means is instead of it being toe up on the lead side, you'll see that the face is a little bit on the open side, just a fraction, just a few degrees.

A few degrees means a world of difference down here.

Face angle is 80% of your shot shape.

So I will hit a little bit of what we call a squeeze cut.

Now, as I start getting wider, what that's going to do is it's going to start shifting the swing plane a little bit flatter, so a little bit more in to out, and it's going to give me the ability to start hitting more up on the ball, right?

So when I start hitting more up on the ball, now I can let the club face rotate a little bit harder, and now I can start hitting those little bit higher draws.

So stance width and ball position and tee height all play a very dynamic role in how you're going to hit the golf ball.

It's always going to change based off of what you are doing with your swing at home.

So play around with it.

So play around with your tee height.

Play around with your ball position.

Then start doing those drills where you start getting your wrists and your forearms to rotate toe up to toe left.

Then start using your right hand as a thrust drill, right?

So have the club flipped upside down.

Start syncing this up so your left hip's pulling back and away.

You're starting to sync it up down here, okay?

Now you put it back on with the left hand.

You start doing those things together, okay?

And then you can start making the swing a little bit longer and faster.

And you're going to go out there and start seeing shots that have a little bit more zip to them.

Simple as that.

So who's got questions for me?

Because I know that you guys have a lot of questions and I know I talk really, really fast.

So if this is your first time meeting me, welcome to the speed zone.

All right.

I know it wasn't mind blowing information today.

I just wanted to talk to you about the freedom of being able to change your setup, being able to change ball position and understanding how tee height can ultimately affect what you're doing as far as angle of attack is concerned.

Wind the base up a little bit, create a little bit more secondary axis tilt, get the club more on the ascending blow, and you will see that because you are hitting more up on the golf ball and being able to release the club a little bit harder, that you start getting more distance on the same club head speed.

Pretty crazy, right?

So, questions.

When you start to tee the ball higher, is it recommended to create some additional axis tilt in your setup to encourage an additional path upward?

So, this is a tough question to a certain degree, Patrick, because of the fact that too much secondary axis tilt can lead us into a lot of big issues that I, if I went into all of them here in today's workshop, we would be here for about three hours.

So, some people will want to set up with a little bit more tilt.

Why?

Well, because when they're getting over on their right side, their tendency is to start moving harder off of their right side to their left, and so it just helps them not get out in front of the shot.

So, I don't really advocate a huge increase to it, but I will say this, that it is super important when you go to a wider base that you're still shifting your weight to your trail side, because a lot of times people will feel like that's too much movement to get to this lead, and so they'll start staying really centered, and then you start running into reverse pivot territory.

So, you can play around with it at address.

I'm not a big advocate for it.

I like to keep the axis tilt exactly the same as it would be when you're in stock shot format.

So, if I widen my base a little bit, and my ball position is more forward, it's still going to be the same.

Weight distribution, same thing.

Discuss wrist cock and the driver's swing.

So, discuss wrist cock and the driver's swing.

Okay.

So, wrist cock or wrist set, what we're going to do is we're going to have a gradual amount of set as we go back.

So, at hip high, the club is going to be parallel to the ground.

Okay?

As we start going back, that wrist set starts to increase.

I'll show you what that looks like from face on.

So, as we start our takeaway, we start to get a little bit of support.

It's not active movement.

It's just support.

And as we continue to turn our body, that angle starts to increase a little bit.

Okay?

So, I'm not going to get to full max range of motion with my wrist at the top of the golf swing.

Why?

Well, if I go to the top and I start actively cocking my wrist, okay?

If I start actively cocking my wrist up there, guess what you're doing?

Well, you're starting the stretch shortening cycle.

So, you start stretching out those muscles in the wrists and the forearms, guess what they want to do?

They want to start moving out away from you.

And that can start the release too soon.

When you start releasing the club too soon from the top of the swing, your body is going to stop doing its thing, right?

Because the club's already on its way down.

So, it's very hard to get things synced back up.

So, obviously, with the driver, we want to make sure that we have lag.

We want to make sure that we have that wrist angle in place.

But we also want to be able to get rid of it in time.

And that secondary axis tilt will help you promote an earlier release of those wrists for sure, all day long.

So, definitely keep yourself at about 80% max range of motion at the top of the swing.

So, it's going to be a little bit of set at takeaway.

As the lead arm is parallel to the ground, it starts to increase.

Then at the top of the swing, it's like, this would be 100%.

This is like 80%.

Okay?

And then just try to preserve it your best and get rid of it at the bottom.

So, any comments for push-release players?

My comments for push-release players are, if you want to turn your body and fire your right arm down through the hitting area to release the club, you can still do that here.

That's totally fine.

You're going to find that a push -releaser is always going to have less secondary because they're doing what with their chest down through the hitting area?

Well, they're turning.

So, with a driver, I'm not a huge advocate for push-releasers.

I gave you a function of what your right arm can do in this swing because, again, I know that you guys are looking to hit the golf ball further, right?

With a push-release, when you're turning through the hitting area, you're tending to delay off the face rotation.

And so, with somebody that's really releasing the club hard in the world of golf, and you'll see every single playing professional when they have a driver in their hands doing this, right?

When you see this happening, you have to remember that the toe of the club is moving eight miles an hour faster than the center of the face, right?

Is that right?

I think that's what it was measured as.

So, it's moving pretty fast.

If you're delaying off that rotation, then you're relying on your body rotation to be able to promote the speed for you.

So, I'm not shying you away from a push -release.

You can do that with your irons, your fairway woods, but with your driver, I would start trying to take advantage of you can use your right arm but just stall the body out down to the bottom.

And that, again, is allowing you to use that dominant side of your body.

Okay?

So, any topics or discussion points you want to see?

Ah, yes.

Thank you, Craig.

So, Craig and I are looking for topics that you guys want us to discuss.

Like, today, I know this wasn't one of those, like, mind-blowing topics and probably stuff that most of you have heard at home before, but I just wanted to kind of re -emphasize a few points here, right?

So, having the freedom to be able to move your ball position around, having the freedom to widen your stance, having the freedom to be able to move the tee height up and down, and understanding that you can develop different shots for different parts of the golf course, right?

Doing that is paramount, right?

If you're getting stuck in a vacuum and you're just always doing things one way with this club in your hands, okay, then you're just a one-trick pony.

Golf is a sport where we've got to go out there with an arsenal of tools, right?

So, you'll see that simple little drills like wrist and forearm rotation and then adding some thrust from the right side to it, and then, you know, tying that back into some of these adjustments that we talked about actually gives you this real big burst in speed, and it's kind of fun, right?

Because who wants to go out there and hit the ball short, I don't.

And so, like I said, I want to create a little bit more secondary.

I'm going to release the club really hard, and I'm going to try to get the ball going at a big, big height with a lot of low spin on it.

So, optimally, you'll see that driver's spin needs to be down in that 2 ,800-degree mark, and you'll want to see about 13, 13.

5 degrees of launch angle.

A good fitter can set you up for that, but that doesn't mean that that launch angle is going to be the one that you're going to use all day long.

I have plenty of driver swings where you'll see my launch angle at 14, 15 degrees, and the golf ball is going way further than it was at 13 degrees, okay?

So, don't get, don't buy a lot of the hoopla that's out there, okay?

You've got to go out there and experiment with this stuff and play around with it.

So, does, what causes pop-up drives?

I'm told it comes from too steep takeaway.

Can you address how to address this?

Yes.

So, pop-up drives, this is a fun one, right?

Because this is, there's nothing more annoying.

So, it's not too steep of a takeaway, right?

That can be a contributing factor, but the number one thing that you're doing on the way down is you're steepening the angle of attack, right?

So, when you come down, you either have pulled the handle and you're in front of the golf ball, right?

Or you've turned your chest to get your hands in that position.

So, when you're hitting down on your drivers as sharply as you are, then the ball is going to hit really high on the face and you're going to hit a pop-up.

That's the predominant miss that we would see, which a lot of you at home are like, well, I would think that if I was popping it up, that it would be like this and I would be hitting way underneath it.

Absolutely not.

I can assure you that that's not where your pop -up is coming from.

For those of you that have ever had what we call an idiot mark, right?

Anybody know what an idiot mark is?

That's when you hit the ball on the top of the face and you get the little dimples on the top of the club head.

And every one of my friends that comes into my house and tries my golf clubs out knows that if they put an idiot mark on my club, they're in big trouble.

I let them hit it.

They've all stole all my golf clubs over the years, but I said to them, you don't put an idiot mark on my club.

So it's just coming in too steep, right?

So the ways that you would get too steep on it are on the way down, you would either pull the handle in front of the ball, okay?

Or you're turning your body with the handle in front of the ball and you're going to hit down on it, okay?

This is a club that you don't want to do that.

So I know it's counterintuitive because I've seen this way too often.

You hit the pop-up and then they start trying to tee the ball lower and instead of trying to fix the issue, right?

Don't, if you hit the ball high in the face, don't tee the ball lower to try to fix it.

Get the correct secondary axis tilt in place and don't turn your shoulders through it.

And let the club release, and you'll start hitting the club more in the ace inning blow and hit it more in the middle of the face, okay?

All right, so I know there's an RS video there about how to warm up a routine prior to a round.

Give ourselves the best opportunity to play our best day.

So, yeah, so I have, I was supposed to do the trustline video a couple, a few weeks ago, but I ended up getting COVID and I was real sick.

And I know Chuck did his rendition of, of that topic.

I have a very, very different spin on it and it also talks a little bit about how to warm up and practice and stuff because I think that's a huge viable part of it.

So I'm going to be actually introducing that to our, our webinar list as we come up, as we move forward.

Stopping the ball on the green.

I don't know.

How do you stop the ball on the green?

Wrong workshop.

I'm just kidding.

So you need backspin, right?

So how do you get backspin?

Well, you have to hit down on the golf ball.

So it's, there's a balancing act of that.

So sometimes people want to try to get the ball launching really high in the air with their irons.

And they start leaning back on the right side and helping it.

And then they're just decreasing the spin that the ball has.

Any distance from the ball, tips of the driver, any different from other clubs?

Really, really good question.

And I am so freaking sorry that I didn't address this in the session today.

You have to remember I was set up to do this outdoors.

And when the rain came in, I had to quickly make some adjustments here.

And so I've been a scatterbrain mess.

So distance from the golf ball.

The only thing I want you to remember is when you hinge to get yourself over the ball.

Okay.

So your shoulders are going to be back in a neutral position here.

So butt back, chest over the ball, your arms are hanging down freely.

The clubs should just rest in your hands.

Okay.

There's no way that I want your hands out away from you.

And there's no way I want your arms pulled back into your body.

I want your hands and your arms hanging down freely underneath your chest.

Okay.

Underneath your shoulders in neutral position.

So when you start to hinge forward, you have to remember that your shoulders bear mass and they're going to try to get rounded.

Okay.

So you just keep your shoulders back, let your arms hang and let the club rest in your hands.

If you start moving your hands and your arms out away from your body, then what you're going to do inherently is you're going to start creating a flatter, more rounder swing plane.

And sometimes that's not to your advantage.

That can force you to get deep and that can force you to become really rotational on the way down.

And I know very, I know some specific people that are in this room that are a little bit too rotational on the way down.

Wink, wink.

Okay.

So I know there is a series already, but refresher on green side, bunker play, uphill, downhill side.

Awesome.

Those are great ideas because those topics right there are often overlooked.

I think everybody wants to go out there and have this sort of notion that we're going to be living in the world of perfect lies every time, but we've got to learn how to hit it out of all these crazy lies.

Uphill, downhill lies, we face that stuff every single day on the golf course.

So those are definitely good topics.

We will address that for sure.

So I think there was another question up here that I missed.

If I missed any questions, please feel free to fire those back in.

Otherwise, I think we're kind of winding down.

Any more questions?

Hitting into the wind.

When it's breezy, swing easy.

And I'm dead serious.

So if it's directly back in your face, the number one tendency, great question, Barbara.

The number one tendency is that we start trying to swing harder to try to make the golf ball go further.

When we start trying to swing harder, where do we start trying to swing harder from?

Well, we start trying to swing harder from our hands and our arms.

So I tend to try to make the easiest swing that I possibly can.

I try to stay within myself.

I will not go to the ball being real low in this format because that does produce a little bit steeper of an angle of attack.

And that does produce a little bit more spin.

Now, there are some circumstances where I've hit knockdown drivers before.

But it would have to be very, very windy for me to do that.

In most cases, what I'm trying to do, and because I know that my spin is optimized, I know that I'm right around that 26 to 2800 mark, what I'm trying to do is I'm hitting that second mark.

So I'm half on, half above the face.

Ball position is just slightly inside of the instep.

And I'm trying my best at this point to just release the club as hard as I possibly can.

I'm probably not going to have as much secondary because that secondary axis tilt is going to tend to get the club a little bit more on the upward swing.

So I'll try to feel a little bit more upright with my spine.

So what I mean here is this.

If I widen my base up for more stability and more secondary, what I'm going to try to do as I come down is I'm going to try to feel a little bit more upright with my spine.

So it's going to essentially maybe take out that four and six degrees of upward that I have in my swing and move it down to like one and two degrees.

Okay?

Which is totally fine.

And that's all just a little adjustment that I'm doing with my spine.

I'm not thinking about anything with my hands.

It's all just done with spine and then just letting the club release.

What usually causes hitting off the heel of the driver?

Great question.

So I battled with this myself when I was playing professional because I got too far from the inside.

So the number one cause for people hitting it towards the heel is this movement on the way down.

See that?

And you see the right leg and right hip moving forward.

Look what my chest does.

So if I'm here and you look at that.

Okay?

So my head and chest move vertically.

So when you're driving off of your right foot, okay, you have to remember that what that's going to do to swing plane.

So if this is on plane, right?

Coming down into the hitting area.

And then I take my right leg and my right foot and I start moving this way.

See what it does?

See how it moves the swing plane kind of back and behind me.

So when you start coming in a little bit more from the inside because your posture is moving vertically, then in turn, you're going to start exposing the heel of the club to the ball.

So a good way to kind of overcome that is when you're doing that right arm release drill.

So when you're pulling the left hip back and you're snapping down, if you look at my head and my chest, okay, you can see that I'm staying down in the shot.

You start coming up with that movement.

You're creating little bits of plane shift, right?

So a lot of times people think about swing plane from here to here, right?

I don't think about swing plane from there at all, right?

Well, I do, right?

But most of it's being measured down, down at the bottom of the swing arm.

And so if you make a little adjustment at the bottom, it leads to a lot of little chaotic things that can come out of it.

So generally speaking, it's too much right leg, hips moving forward, spine coming up and out.

So tie a new piece into that right arm drill and just keep the head and chest down.

This week, actually next Thursday, they're going to be releasing a video on Luke List, which they just released.

It's a drill that coincides with it that I just, I just filmed.

So you're going to see how to make the post-up move happen and how to get yourself to stay in posture with it.

So can you please review the three tee ball positions and when to use each?

Absolutely.

So this ball position, the first one is the one I use the least.

It's in the middle of the club face.

So it's going to be teed very low.

Okay.

Depending on the depth of your face, this, this Cleveland driver, that's really old is really deep.

So it's really tall.

Okay.

So I'm going to be in the middle of the face.

This is when I'm trying to hit a really kind of spinny cut, right?

If anybody's ever heard that expression.

So the ball, I'm going to be hitting a little bit more down on it.

I think my angle of attack last time I measured it when it was in the middle of face was down in the ballpark of two degrees.

Right.

swing at all.

Okay.

This is when I'm going to be in stock shot or stock swing.

So what I mean by stock swing, My stance with is going to be just as it would.

With a pitching wedge or a nine iron, ball position is going to be the exact same as a pitching wedge or a nine iron.

Okay.

So when you're hitting this shot, I also tend to hold the face rotation off because I don't want to hit low draws.

I like to hit a low cut.

Nobody perfected the lower, the low cut better than Forrest Fessler.

If you don't know who he is, look him up on YouTube.

Rest his soul.

So he's a great guy.

I actually used to work with him.

He's a fantastic, fantastic ball striker.

Crazy.

The shots this guy could hit.

Okay.

Um, so then the second one would be half on half above, right?

This is the one that I use the most.

This is the, if you were to go out and play golf with me and we were getting on the first tee, you'd probably see me hit this shot the most.

So half on the half on the face, half above some people like being full ball above the face in that, in that territory.

And then the monster one, when I'm trying to launch it, like I'm fully, I'm getting as, as far up as I possibly can.

And that's when my base gets the widest, right?

So if you've seen these long drive guys, you look at the tee heights that they use, right?

So the tee heights are like really high.

I don't have anything that high here in the house.

So the tee height is going to be really high and their stance gets really, really wide.

Right?

So why is that?

Well, because they're hitting tons and tons of positive angle attack.

Look at Kyle Berkshauer's numbers, right?

He's insane.

He's upwards of 10, 11 degrees, right?

He's hitting up on the ball, 10, 11 degrees.

How is he making that happen with all of that crazy rotational force and all of that parametric acceleration?

Well, if you look at it, he's staying back and behind it and letting the club release upward.

Okay.

Definitely a good way for a lot of speed to come out of it.

So any other questions?

Thank you guys very much for joining me on this Saturday and thank you for putting up with the chaos that you didn't even see ensue.

It was hard to get settled in this morning and deliver the information that I wanted to.

So I apologize if I missed something on like something easy like setup, right?

I don't want your hands and arms pushed out away from your body.

So hopefully, thank you, Patrick.

Always awesome working with you.

So how to manage a swing that is falling apart during a round.

Tom, I love that topic.

I love that topic.

In fact, I just had about a 45-minute chat with one of my students yesterday.

I love that.

So I think that's a great idea.

Thank you very much.

Jimmy, thank you.

Mitchell, thank you.

Aloha.

You guys are awesome.

Thank you very much for joining me this lovely Saturday.

Well, rainy Saturday.

I don't know what the weather is like in your neck of the woods, but it is not beautiful here.

Oh, thank you, Craig.

If you guys need any further assistance or you want to talk about this further, then by all means, post up comments in the community.

We'll definitely have some open discussion about this stuff.

If you want to show us some of the T height adjustments that you're making or some of the stance width adjustments that you're making, show them, right?

We'll take a look at that real quick and we'll give you our assessment and say, hey, yep, make this, go out there and try to make this work for you.

But I think if you were to kind of put it all together with, you know, Playing around with the release stuff that I gave you.

And then adding a little bit of thrust from the right hand and then playing around with stance, width with it, you're going to see some good results.

All right.

Thank you guys very much for all of the topics.

I think we asked the last boot camp where there was quite a few people in there.

We didn't get one freaking discussion topic.

All right.

So you guys are awesome.

I hope you guys have a great rest of your weekend.

We'll see you soon.

Must be Premium Member to Comment

64x64
Gerd Helene
What's the reason that the PGA average for drives is as low as -1,3 with all this talk about teeing it high?
March 2, 2023
64x64
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Hello Gerd. Are you referring to their Angle of Attack? That is the average for the PGA Tour. Not all players. When it comes to higher swing speeds and fairway some pros lean towards accuracy over a bit of distance. For example, if you look at Rory's Trackman Numbers he has changed to almost +2 for his AoA. Lower clubhead speed players need higher AoA to gain more carry.
March 2, 2023

We're after one thing: Real Results - Real Fast. And that's exactly what our members achieve. And that's why they say the AXIOM is: Mind-blowing. Game changing. Revolutionary.

Check it out ...

Here at RotarySwing, talk is cheap and the proof is always in the pudding. Come see the massive transformations we can achieve together in your swing.

See for yourself ...

From beginner to pro, we have what you need to get you where you want to go.

See how inside ...

RotarySwing was founded out of frustration with the current state of golf instruction. Quinton knew a better way had to exist to learn this game we all love.

Learn more ...