Golf Driving Tips Blog

Each Spring it is time to get back in the golf swing and begin to limber up for the new season. My first step is to visit the driving range with my trusty seven iron and hit a small bucket of range balls.

Once I arrive at the range I begin to limber up by performing some simple yet very important golf stretching exercises. It usually take me about ten to twelve minutes to perform my routine which prepares my body for the movements it is about to encounter.

Once I feel limber the first thing I do is align the driving mat with a specific location on the driving range. With my seven iron that is usually somewhere around the 150 yard marker. If I cannot get a position near the center of the range, I simply move the mat (change the angle) until it aligns where I want it to.

Now it’s time for a few practice swings. Without concern for positioning my feet properly, I simply begin swinging the golf club with two hands and after a few swings I begin to release my right hand through the swing to remind me that the golf swing is more a “pulling” motion than a “pushing” motion. Once I feel comfortable with rebuilding my muscle memory it’s time to hit some golf balls.

The biggest problem I have at the beginning of each golf season is establishing the proper distance to stand from the ball. It usually takes me about three or four swings to zero in on the correct distance for my seven iron. With the proper distance established, the mat aligned towards the target and my feet parallel to the ball, I’m ready to start the season.

My first ten swings are very soft and deliberate. What I mean by that is I make sure that every aspect of my swing is correct from the take away to impact to the follow through. At this point I am not concerned about distance at all. I simply want to re-establish a good consistent swing. If the ball is not going towards the target I established earlier on, I make a few minor adjustments in my stance, grip or both.

Now my goal is very simply to perform a consistent swing and have the ball land near my target. Once I can accomplish this ten swings in a row, I begin to work on varying my distance and placement.  Following these simple steps will help get you back in the golf swing quickly and easily.

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The good golf swing results in the golf ball flying straight and far.  As I observe amateur golfers swing at the ball I have come to realize that the most common golf swing error is using too much right hand (for right hand golfers) during the down swing.  The key to the good golf swing is to pull the club through impact and avoid the tendency to push it instead.

Easier said then done.  Right?  Let’s look at the good golf swing step by step to see if I can pinpoint the issue specifically.

Let’s make the assumption that if your ball goes anywhere other than straight down the fairway, you should be looking for a way to correct that.  Most people that slice the golf ball are pushing with their right hand which forces the club face to open up and places unwanted spin on the ball.

Coming over the top is the most common mistake amateur golfers have and will need to be corrected prior to attaining the good golf swing.  Please review this article before going any further.  If you need additional help with the basic swing, another place to review golf swing tips can be found here.  So once you are confident that your basic golf swing technique is okay, we can begin to discuss the details of the down swing that will give you the good golf swing you are looking for.

Since the golf back swing is a pulling motion where your shoulders and torso are turning to the right while your arms bring the club straight back (not up), the natural tendency is to begin your down swing with your right arm.  Doing this creates a pushing motion which results in delaying your leg and hip motion.

As your golf club reaches the top of your back swing concentrate on lightening the grip with your right hand and forcing your legs and hips to move first.  Although you may be able to hit the golf ball straight without starting your swing with your legs and hips, you will never attain the maximum distance.

A simple technique is to begin your down swing by forcing your right (back) knee to move towards your left (front) knee.  This puts your hips in motion and pulls your shoulders through impact.  While concentrating on your legs, remember that your left hand must be the dominate one during impact.

Following these steps will produce the good golf swing you have been looking for.

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Golfing, though it looks like a laid back simple enough sport, requires a great deal of physical strength and flexibility. In order to achieve the perfect golf swing, one must maintain fluid motion throughout the entire body on every put, slice or drive. Here are a few simple golf tips to improve your next performance out on the course:

Your Grip

Your grip is the foundation of your golf swing and developing the right grip is critical to your success in hitting the ball farther and straighter. There are several types of grips that you can use including the interlocking grip, the overlapping grip, and the baseball grip. The grip that feels most comfortable to you will depend on your physical strength and/or the length and girth of your fingers. For beginners, the baseball grip is the most common.

Watch your alignment

There are two main elements to be considered when lining up your golf swing. First and foremost is the target line (the line that the golf club is actually on). Secondly – the stance line, also known as the body line. Both are extremely important. You must keep your spine straight, unrounded and always be aware of your position with relation to the ball.

“Stroke” the ball, don’t just hit it

Often the difference between a strong, powerful swing and a misguided hack is the tendency to hit, rather than stroke, the ball. By stroking we mean creating a fluid motion that carries through your whole swing. It’s best to practice developing this technique with your short putts, when you are less likely to want to put full force on the ball. Once you get used to the motion it’s easier to carry the lesson through to your long game.

Don’t hold your head stiff

On the backswing, your head should have a slight, natural head movement due to the shift in your weight. On the downswing however, be sure that your head remains behind the line of the ball on impact since that creates a more powerful underside impact on the ball.

Don’t Rush Your Back Swing

The backswing is what generates the power behind your downswing and should be taken slowly to conserve your energy for your downswing. The left arm should be kept as straight, and taken as far back, as comfortably possible.

Maintain the angle between the club and your wrist during downswing

Downswing power comes from the leverage between the angle of the club and your wrists, not your hands, so it’s important to keep the angle intact. As with the backswing, you should take your time with the downswing as taking your time means keeping all of your body in line.

Other than these simple golf tips it’s important to remember that practice makes perfect. It took Tiger years to perfect his swing so don’t expect it to be any different for you.

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Three Key Elements To Remember

Chipping around the green typically played from within a few yards of the putting surface. Usually played with a 6-, 7-, 8- or 9-iron or pitching wedge with the ball played back in the player’s stance. This particular blend of ball position and club results in a shot that is in the air about 1/3 of the time and then rolls about 2/3 of the time before landing near the cup. Chipping around the green is often confused with a pitch shot which is played further from the green and meant to have a higher flight path with the ball landing closer to the pin with minimal roll.

Some of the typical issues amateurs have with chipping around the green include:

1. Topping the ball – A shot in which the golfer very nearly swings over the ball, with impact between club and ball occurring near the crown of the golf ball.

2. Hitting thin – A shot in which the clubhead strikes the ball too high (near its midpoint or slightly lower), often resulting in a low, sometimes slicing shot that can travel a long distance.

3. Grounding – A shot in which the clubhead hits the ground to far behind the ball.

4. Bladeing – A shot where the ball sails completely over the green.

5. Shanking - A mis-hit that is so bad the golfer makes contact with the ball with a part of the club other than the clubface.

The basic cause of these typical issues golfers have can be found in the shot set up. Basically the groundwork necessary for successfully chipping around the green can be found in three positions:

1. Position the golf ball in the middle of your stance.
Keeping the ball in the middle of your stance will provide more consistent impact. Placing the ball too far forward in your stance will have you topping the ball, hitting the ball thin or pulling it to the left. Conversely, having the ball too far back will cause you to top the ball, shank it and push it to the right.

2. For right handed golfers, 75% of your weight should be on your left foot.
This makes sure that you are hitting down on the ball as opposed to hitting up. It is important to make sure that you keep your weight on your front foot during the back swing.

3. Grip down on the club to the end of the grip and point the grip end of the club to the middle of your left leg.  When you grip down to the end of the grip you will make certain to have more control during impact. To eliminating topping and thin shots, try moving the grip part of the club further across your left leg which provides the necessary downward angle.

Following these three key elements will definitely enhance your ability to make some great chip shots around the green.

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The Golf Fairway Shot can become your favorite shot once you master it. Once you have driven off the tee box, you will probably be faced with a second shot, hopefully from the fairway. Of course, we hope that you’ve been able to make it to the green, except for par 5 holes, that’s just not realistic for most golfers. The lie of the ball in The Golf Fairway Shot will dictate how you hit your next shot. In some friendly games, your opponents may allow you to put the ball up on some grass. This will emulate, in a way, a tee since you cannot use a tee with a fairway shot. In tournaments or serious money games, you will probably have to play the ball as it lies, so it’s a good idea to know how to hit an effective Golf Fairway Shot.

Many inexperienced golfers are intimidated by the golf fairway shot. They will often baby their swing and not hit the ball fully. This is a huge mistake. Golf clubs are designed to work with a full golf swing and do a specific job, so choose a club that matches your distance from the hole and then take a full swing. Don’t be afraid that you’ll overshoot the hole. If you’ve picked the right club, you’ll get to the green.

Aim your left shoulder (the right one if you’re a southpaw) at your target – the flag. Your hands should be in front of the ball at impact and remember to keep the same swing motions as if you are driving the ball off a tee. To help square your clubface, try to touch your left forearm with your right forearm at impact.

If you are in deep grass, the main idea is to get the ball up in the air. That means you will want a club that has a lot of loft such as an 8 or 9 iron. Just remember that you will most likely not get a lot of distance with these smaller clubs.

When you swing, be sure to follow through after impact. The laws of physics dictate that when you strike the ball, it will be carried through and into the air as your arms bring the club back up.

Your technique on deep grass shots should be geared toward minimizing the contact of the grass. In other words, you want to hit the ball as cleanly as possible. To do that, you need to move the ball back in your stance.

For instance, if on a 5-iron shot from the fairway you position the ball off your left heel, move it back to a spot an inch to the right of your heel for a shot from the rough. This ball position should leave your hands slightly ahead of the clubface at address. From that setup you’ll tend to swing the club up a bit more vertically on the backswing and return it a bit more steeply to the ball. With this steeper attack the clubface will come down on the ball rather than brush through the grass.

For really deep grass, again, the idea is to minimize the contact with the grass and therefore, how it will affect your shot. Once again, play the ball back in your stance, but this time, play it two inches back instead of one, because you’re going to have to go down after the ball.

To further increase the steepness of the swing, open your stance a few degrees so that your feet, knees, hips and shoulders align to the left. Your club head should align square to the target line. It’s the same basic alignment as for a slice, but when playing a short iron from the rough you won’t have to worry about any sideward spin.

Since the grass will grab at your club and close the face, at impact, you’ll want an extra-firm grip in your left hand. Alternatively, you can aim the clubface a bit right of your target at address, thereby allowing the grass to turn the club face into a square position at impact.

The swing should be an aggressive, forceful one. If you get a kick out of swinging hard, this is the place to enjoy yourself. It’s a powerful, steep chop that must go down and through the thick stuff. Be sure to keep the club accelerating through impact; otherwise you may move the ball only a few feet. The faster you can get the club moving through the ball, the faster that ball will climb out of its nest and the farther it will go.

With a good Golf Fairway Shot, eventually, you’ll be close enough to chip.

Golf Driving Tips.

Tags: The Golf Swing by J. Cavell
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This lesson will show you how to set your weight further back to hit longer golf drives. Addressing the ball with more weight on your back foot generates more balance and power.

As I work to improve my overall game, longer golf drives become more and more important to me. Once I learned how to keep the ball straight, my hunger for driving the golf ball longer became greater.

Watch the video here.

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When you swing Coming Over The Top with your golf swing you will have the tenancy to pull, slice or shank the ball and will never attain the perfect golf swing. Coming Over The Top is the most common mistake for amateur golfers and most of them do not know how to correct this common golf swing flaw. Basically, the problem is swinging over the top instead of staying on the same golf plane during the down swing.

Coming Over The Top – Why does it happen?

It’s all about controlling the golf swing.

The golf swing is a chain reaction event. What you do at set up determines what you do on the takeaway. What you do on the takeaway determined what happens half way back on the swing. What happens halfway back in the swing determines what happens at the top of the swing and continuing on to impact. So you can see that if you do not begin the golf swing correctly, it will have a compounding negative effect causing you to come over the top.

So How Can You Fix Coming Over the Top?

The first place to look to correct coming over the top is the set up. Most people that I see that have this problem set up with their feet closed and shoulders open which is a very contradicting set up position. This inevitably causes an improper takeaway where the golfer breaks the wrist prematurely and pulls the club back (inside) instead of away. This creates a very flat swing plane with the club shaft pointing way out past the ball. The premature rotating of the shoulders during the takeaway is the main cause of Coming Over The Top.

At halfway point of the swing, you want your left arm to be straight and parallel with the ground and the club shaft pointing to about where the ball is lying or slightly inside. The improper position will inevitably prevent the golfer from hitting the ball at all, so they over compensate by bringing the club over the top to hit the golf ball. Basically your subconscious mind is forcing a compensation by swinging over the top in order to make contact with the ball.

Watch a before and after video that shows the causes of Coming Over The Top and the proper swing technique to avoid this common problem.

Tags: Golf Driving Tips, Perfect Golf Swing, The Golf Swing by J. Cavell
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The biomechanics of the golf swing can teach us a lot about our golf game. Understanding how these biomechanics work will allow you to swing the golf club more fluidly and effortlessly. Biomechanics is the study of the human body. Your golf swing is a combination of working parts. One action leads another in one continuous motion. There is no one size fits all program for all golfers. Knowing the biomechanics of one’s own body and its strengths and weaknesses will determine your golf swing tendencies leading to swing faults. A big part of mastering the biomechanics of the golf swing includes examining an exercise program or routine which will help you reduce injury as well as correct swing problems.

There are 6 major biomechanics stages of the golf swing:

1. Address position biomechanics
2. Club take away biomechanics
3. Transition stage biomechanics
4. Down swing biomechanics
5. Impact biomechanics
6. Follow Through biomechanics

All of these stages are equally important to the golf swing and require a different set of biomechanics to perform effectively. The main muscles used to swing the club are not always what you would think. For instance biomechanics tell us that it is the core muscles (lower back, abdomen, oblique muscles) mainly responsible for generating torque in your swing. These muscles are strengthened by the swing motion so must be improved or strengthened by using specific exercises and stretching routines.

The golf swing is tied in with our body movements. The muscle of the body along with balance and weight shift generates speed for a swing and the force to deliver the ball. If there are weaknesses in the biomechanics of the body they will results in weak biomechanics in your golf swing. In other words if there are weaknesses in the biomechanics of the body they will result in a weakness of the biomechanics of the golf swing.

Additional golf driving tips can be found here.

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Some think that driving the golf ball is a simple process, it really isn’t. Some seasoned golfers see Golf Driving Tips as a simple process to improve the golf swing. “Grip it and rip it” is a common phrase you can hear on many tee boxes. However, there are some things you can do to get more distance on your drives.

First and foremost, you need to be relaxed when you begin addressing the ball. You must be loose before pulling back the club. Do not tighten up over the golf ball. It is important to waggle the club back and forth a few times in order to create some flow to start the golf swing. This action will promote proper rhythm and tempo. [Read more →]

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