Every golfer I have ever met wants to hit longer drives with the Holy Grail being to drive the ball 300 yards. If this is also your goal then you will need to master the 3 keys to 300 yard drives.
The longest drivers in the world all have very different looking swings. Watch the World Long Drive Championship each year and you will see many different body shapes and swing styles. Yet if you watch closely you will see that they all have certain characteristics in common.
Now it may be unrealistic to ask you to go to the gym and work out every day of the week in order to get as strong and as fast as these players, but there are a few swing characteristics that you can copy fairly easily and put into your own golf swing. You may not hit the ball as long as the Long Drive players but employing the 3 keys I outline in this video will give you the best chance of hitting 300 yard drives.
Now that you can drive the ball much longer you will have to play more pitch approach shots.
When you watch golf there’s nothing quite like watching the pros smash their drives 300 plus yards far into the distance.
But how far does the average golfer hit the ball?
Thanks to great advances in golf tracking technology from the folks at Arccos, top analysis by Golf WRX and the latest Golf Distance Insights Report produced by the USGA and R&A we now have great data available to answer this question.
So in this video present the latest information broken down by age, gender, handicap and swing speed!
Maintaining balance in your golf swing is fundamentally important to the quality of your golf shots. And the way you keep – or fail to keep your balance – can help tell the difference between a beginner, average, or a professional golfer. Indeed, you’ll notice that Tour Pros are always perfectly balanced as they proceed with their golf swings, even at the break neck speed that those swings occur.
For amateur golfers, losing your balance can often happen during power swings, where you need the ball to carry over a long distance. And that can oftentimes happen with the longest club in your bag, the driver, where the golfer will try to swing very hard at the ball in order to try to gain some extra distance from the teeing ground.
While an off-balance swing is often visible at the end of the follow through, where the golfer might lose his footing, it usually means that the loss of balance began earlier in the swing. It’s just that the golfer was able to stay on his feet through impact.
The key to checking whether you are keeping your balance and in order to fix any related issues is to practice making slow motion swings.
– Get into a good setup position to begin with, with your weight split 50/50 between your and left and right feet and inside your feet (neither towards your heels nor your toes). A good way to tell if you are correctly positioned and in balance is to tap (raise) your toes or heels in succession.
– During the backswing, your weight should move towards the back foot and it is normal if you find it more difficult to raise your back heel when you reach the top of the swing position.
– During the downswing, your weight will move back forward as you move towards impact with the ball. At that point, your weight will be firmly on your front foot and your right heel will have started rising from the ground.
– Finally, at the end of the follow through, your weight should reside almost completely on your front foot. You should be able to hold that position for as long as required.
Practice with these slow motion swings and notice how your weight moves around your body as you progress from one swing sequence to the next. Make sure to remain perfectly in balance as you do and if you can, you should be able to translate that balance into your full speed swings.
The flex in the shaft can have a significant effect with your ball striking, we all know this, and flexing the shaft can also have an effect on what type of swing you have.
There’s more to consider than, what is the right flex for your swing profile? You should also take into consideration, what is the right flex for your acceleration profile.
If you have an early release or cast the club, even if you have a faster swing speed, you can most likely get away with a softer flex. If you create and hold significant lag, even with a slower swing speed, you can most likely fit yourself with a stiffer flex.
Taking these points into consideration your shaft flex will be critical in helping maximize your consistency.
Why It’s Almost Impossible to Drive a Golf Ball 450 Yards
WIRED’s Robbie Gonzalez looks at carry vs. total distance, breaks down the biomechanics of the tee shot, and gets tips from Dustin Johnson, one of the top drivers on the tour, to find out why it’s Almost Impossible to drive a golf ball 450 yards through the air.
