Lessons - Driving
This shot often catches people out. Many golfers say they consistently play a bad drive from the fist tee, due to the pressure of other people watching. If this is the case for you, you may want to visit our Pressure Shots section for advice. Other than this the only other thing you can do is to hit the driving range or get a driving net, until you can hit drives untill the cows come home.
The drive is technically different from other shots in the game. The most important part here is visualizing the drive.
When taking practise shots, imagine you are actually hitting the ball and picture it sailing straight up the middle of the fairway. This is the most important part of the whole process. A bad drive on one hole can mentally affect your complete game. Therefore it is crucial that you always have a positive image in your head at all times. Once you have built yourself up enough, it is time to take your stance.
First grip the club with your preferred grips fairly lightly, but not so light light that create tension in your arms. Take a couple of practise swings and focus on an exact target. When you swing think about nothing else other than visualizing the ball sailing towards that target. Finally take your stance. This time, the ball should be just slightly towards your front foot. Line yourself up with the target. Focus now on the ball but still think about the target.
Settle yourself with a few deeper breaths, in through the nose. Start to concentrate on your swing and what you are going to do. As a beginner your swing should be slow, but as you gain confidence, swing speed will increase. Slowly swing back, and push through the ball remembering to keep looking down at the ground even after the ball is away. After your club has reached its maximum height on the through swing hold it there for some top spin and a little extra distance.
When you hit a good drive, this is especially important as you can enjoy seeing your ball fly away into the distance.
Try hitting some balls down at the driving range to improve you drives. This is useful when beginning as you can concentrate on just driving at a large open target.
Your personal driver choice is very important. Do not chose a driver that is too heavy. This will cause an unnatural swing which will manifest itself in poor shots. You must feel 100 per cent comfortable with your club in order to hit consistent good shots.
Also visit our Golf Driving Tips Videos Section for good golf driving tips.
Last year I hit a real rut in my game. I just could not get my drives to go straight. So every day after work I went down to the golf driving range and hit about two hundred balls. This was getting expensive as you can imagine so in the end I bought a golf driving net and a couple of books on golf driving tips. This book taught me how to use the golf driving net. The main secret to successful drives or hitting longer drives is to just pretend the golf driving net is not a net. You need to think of it as a open fairway. After a while I did start to see a distinct difference in my drives. I was hitting longer drives and my fairway percentage was increasing. I bought my golf driving net from ebay along with a chipping net. It was pretty cheap and easy to set up.
So my main golf driving tips is just that. Get a golf driving net from ebay or wherever, and just keep on hitting those drives.
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