DRIVER SWING VS IRON SWING - The Difference EXPLAINED

Should we treat the driver and the iron differently? The answer is yes, we should. And in this video, we're gonna explain why, and more importantly, what you need to do in order to master both the driver and the iron. Guys, welcome back to the channel. This video is a question from a subscriber, Simon Harris. Now, if you want your question answered, make sure you leave a comment down below in the comment section, and we'll choose one lucky winner to do a video on for you, potentially you. So Simon has asked Pierce, can you do a video on how to go from hitting up with the driver to hitting down with the irons? It's something I've had trouble with in the past. On the tee, I hit up with the driver, and suddenly I start hitting up with the irons, completely losing the feeling of hitting down. Can you help me, please? So we've said that we should treat them differently. Why should we treat the iron and driver differently? Well, actually, happy new year, by the way. First of all, look, if we think about an iron, let's think about the iron. We hit an iron off the ground. It's sitting down. Often, we'll have different lies within the rough sloping lies. We're looking to hit the ball first, and we're looking for precision. We're looking for control. Whereas with a driver, we're on a nice flat lie. We can tee it nice and high. Nothing gets in the way on the ground, and we want to hit it a long way. So we want to get distance. We want to whack it and hit it a long way. Of course, we want to be relatively accurate, but this club is very much about distance and power. This one is about precision and control. So look, it's really important to understand that. So the key on this really is, and the key what we're looking to do with this video, is to get you to understand low points. Now, if you can control or master your low points like the best players can, you're going to be a lot more consistent with your golf shots. And the low point is very different whether you've got an iron or a driver. But first of all, what is a low point? So the low point, if we think about this, we've got this arc swinging through the area here, through the hitting area. The low point is the lowest point of that arc. As you know, it's going to be different from the iron to the driver. So if we get an iron in there, we can now see that as we are swinging back down to the golf ball, we are literally swinging down. We'll hit the golf ball first, hopefully. And then the lowest point is almost in that divot somewhere after the golf ball. And then it will continue, obviously the club will continue up that arc there. So this means that there is a downward hit with the iron. Yeah, follow that ball followed by the turn. That was a good strike. That was nice, yeah. That was a good one, first one of the year. So we look at the low point on that, that's six inches past the golf ball. So look, this is where you need to be. If you want to hit your irons better, that low point needs to consistently be past the golf ball. Yeah, that's what Simon would like very much, I'm sure. Right, okay, let's go driver. So what we're after with the driver is, well, first of all, you know straight away, we don't really, unless you're Sergio Garcia, you don't really want to be taking divots with your driver. So it makes sense straight away that the low point with the driver shouldn't be after the golf ball. So the low point with the driver, as we are swinging down, we hopefully have that low point before the golf ball. So the arc is bottoming out before the golf ball, which means then as we are swinging to hit the ball, we're actually swinging on the way up. And that allows us to get the most out of our drivers. It allows us to hit further and it allows us to hit it straighter as well. Yeah, definitely. The majority of golfers out there, if you can hit up on the driver, it's going to make you more consistent and it's going to give you that extra bit of yardage off the tee. Wow, very high. So on that one, you were 2.6 inches before the golf ball. Okay, that makes sense. The low point there, so you were hitting up. That makes some sense. So you now understand low point. Let's show you how to consistently get that low point with the driver and with the irons. How are we going to do this? We're going to break it down. We're going to cover setup first with each backswing and then downswing. So we're going to cover the whole lot. So Piers, let's start with setup. Yeah, well, let's just compare iron versus driver as we go through this. So with the setup with the iron, stance first of all, we can see it's narrower than it is with the driver. Ball position with the iron is a little bit past the center of my stance. Whereas with the driver, it's all up into the lead heel. And then as far as weight distribution is concerned, we're generally 50-50 with the iron or ever so slightly leaning on this left side. So maybe 55% on this lead side. With the driver, we can be 50-50, but again, we're probably more likely to be slightly favoring the right-hand side. And then the last thing we're looking at is the tilts of our body. So if we look at our body with the iron, we can see I'm pretty much central in this rectangular box. Whereas with the driver, we can see that my right side is definitely nearer the right side of that box. So as you can see, there are some quite big differences there. So let's just give you a really simple drill to help you with that iron setup. So one thing we love golfers to do is start with their feet together, like so. And all we're gonna do is we're gonna move the left foot a little bit and the right foot a little bit more. So that allows us to get the golf ball further forward in the stance. We've got more weight on this lead side now. This is something that you like in the lead side as well. I love this, yeah. Yeah, and then generally speaking, if someone's struggling with their ball striking, with hitting the ground before the golf ball, one of my first go-tos is get a little bit more weight in that lead side at the setup, because it can really help with that downward hit and getting that low point after the ball. Another nice ball followed by the turn. Crispy, Andy. Let's get the driver out. Crispy. Low point there, 5.9 inches past the golf ball. So again, well past the golf ball. Attack angle on that one is 7.1 degrees down. Cool. And again, what we're striving for, the better we get at this is to be relatively consistent with that. I think the first one was about six inches past, was it? So you want it to be relatively consistent. So first thing with the driver, obviously, is in our setup. If we wanna hit up on the golf ball and have the low point before the ball, let's tee it up nice and high. So tee it up nice and high. Again, we're gonna go feet together. Left foot, we're just gonna flare it. Right foot, we're gonna move it a lot. So you can now see that ball is well forward in the stance. From here, just to make sure that I get my tilts right, I put my right hand on my side and just slide it down. For me, I only slide it down a little bit, but you may need to slide down an inch or two just to really get that tilt. But for me, I have no problem getting that tilt, so it's less exaggerated for me. Okay, yeah. Low point 3.3 inches before the golf ball. You hit up on that 2.9 degrees. So you can see just having this little routine can certainly make a difference to that low point. Let's get to the backswing. So let's do a driver versus iron comparison now in the backswing. So if we look at the iron, we will see that as I swing back, the pivot, the turning of my body is a lot more centered than it is with the driver. So what we need to focus on is this lead shoulder. So look at the lead shoulder with the iron. We'll notice that it turns and moves away from the target, but look where that's positioned relative to the box compared to the driver. The driver is moving a lot more. The driver's got a lot more turn and move away from that line with that lead shoulder. So with the iron, by having this more centered pivot, it's going to be easier for us to get that low point after the golf ball. Now with the driver, because it's moving over so much, it's going to be a lot easier from there to get that low point behind the golf ball. And we don't mind, Piers, with the driver, a little bit of like shift off the golf ball. If the head moves a little bit, we're okay with that because it only positions the low point more behind the golf ball. So what you do with the driver should be a little bit different with the iron, but we're okay with that. Even a bit of rotation of the head is perfectly fine. And so many people are going, I need to stay still. If you stay still, this is what's going to happen. You will not get any rotation. Then that's obviously not what we want at all. So let's show you a drill that we're going to do with the iron to help you get this more centered pivot. Andy's going to get butt cam over there. But basically what we're going to do is, you'll see why in a moment, we're going to get a limo stick. We're going to throw it in the ground. I'll probably throw it in the wrong place there. Oh no, it needs to back up a little bit. So take your setup and you're literally going to rest it between your, hello, is it going in the ground, Andy? What's going on? Is there a rock underneath there? It needs some strength. That's all you need. It needs some strength, obviously. But from here, we can see now that we've got the alignment stick directly between my butt cheeks. We call this the thong drill, yeah? The thong drill. And this is actually the same color as my thong as well. So what we're looking for with the iron is that when we're getting this centered pivot, is that I'm going to move the alignment stick towards the target with my right butt cheek. So I'm actually moving the alignment stick to the target with my right butt cheek as I am swinging back. So from there, you can see that that's really telling me now that I've got a really good rotation, which is obviously really important, but I'm not moving off the golf ball. So with a drive, when I might move off the golf ball, I won't push that stick towards the target as much. It might move a little bit, but as soon as I'm more centered, it's going to be a lot more like this. I think I'm a little bit too far from the golf ball there. I'd like to hit one. So centered pivot, thong drill. It was a little bit thin, so maybe I was a little bit too far away. But again, you can see when I was doing that then, a lot more centered as a result of staying on the thong drill on the alignment stick. Okay, let's go on the driver then, drill on the driver. Okay, so with this here, we want to reference one of the longest hitters. We said it's about power, it's about distance, the driver. One of the longest hitters, and probably the fastest, I think, from the speeds that I see, Kyle Berkshire. So former world long drive champion. He actually does this in his golf swing. We actually like golfers doing this actually as a drill. So what he does is, you'll see from his swing there, he's bouncing from left foot to right foot. So he bounces from left foot to right foot. As he bounces from his left to his right on his last bounce, he's actually moving the club into the backswing. So bounce, bounce, bounce, and then moves to the top of the backswing. Now look at the journey that lead shoulder does as a result of doing this. So the left shoulder now is really rotating behind the golf ball. And from here, you'll also see that the left heel is up in the air. This is great now because I've got the majority of the pressure in this right leg. I've hardly got, hey Steve, how's it going? So from, good to see you. But from here, you can see bounce, bounce, bounce, move into that right leg. Lead heel comes up, I'm behind the golf ball. It's inevitable I'm gonna hit up on the golf ball. Inevitable. Great drill this is to feel that weight get into that right leg, definitely. And you can do this as a drill just to actually get the feel of how to do this without hitting golf balls, or you can actually hit some golf balls doing it. Now I'm probably not gonna quite do it as good as Kyle does. High launch, little draw. Don't go too far. I mean, low point there on that one is negative 5.4 inches. 5.4 inches before the golf ball. That's way before. Okay, so I don't normally do that. So that just shows you how much and how well that drill actually works. That was really good actually. Okay, let's get into the final one, which is the downswing piece. The iron versus driver. Let's show the difference. Yeah, this is actually quite a big difference again. So with the iron, what we're seeing is from the top of the backswing is we are moving and we are turning towards the target so that when we are striking the golf ball, we can see we've got the shaft length forward, a downward hit, meaning the low point is after the golf ball, where we can see that our lead side is all up against that line. So there's no real gap with my left side of my body and that line. A lot of the weight is going into that left leg. Now, when it comes to the driver, we can see it's different. We can see that the left shoulder is behind that line. It's not actually touching it like the iron. And we can tell you for sure that there won't be as much pressure and weight in that lead leg at impact as there will be with the iron. So let's talk about why that happens. So what happens with the driver is we get to the top of the backswing. Yes, we push down aggressively into that lead leg, but because we're pushing down so aggressively into that lead leg, by the time the club shaft gets down to the right thigh area here with the hands, we're actually starting to move up and push off the ground and move backwards. And that allows us obviously to get that low point behind the golf ball and hit it high. But you'll even see Karl Barkshire, Joe Miller, the long drivers, the real long drivers, they're actually up in the air when they're hitting the golf ball, almost hardly touching the ground when they hit it because they're so aggressive in pushing into that lead leg that it bounces them back. And again, that's why they hit the ball so high with their three degree drivers. Okay, so let's show a drill then with the driver that's gonna help us with this to help it up on the golf ball and then go to the iron as well. Okay, so we've actually got a couple with a driver. So obviously it's hit nice and high. So the first one's one of our old favorites. We call it a thunder stamp. So what we're gonna do, we're gonna get you to the top of the backswing. We spoke about the journey that this shoulder takes. It might even cause that lead heel to come up. If it isn't coming up already, we want you to lift that lead heel up. And then from there, you're gonna start your downswing by slamming it into the ground, which is great because we know we should start the downswing with the lower body. But what it allows us to do, it really gives us that sensation of pushing into the ground, which hopefully from there is gonna push back and allow us to hit on the way up when we hit the golf shot. So watch this lead heel. Again, nice high draw, which suggests it's gonna do that. Sit down, please. Yeah, low point was 5.6, sorry, 5.9 inches before the golf ball. 5.9, well again, that's more than I would normally have as well. So that's a really good one for me. It's a good drill for me to do. Another one we can do, you can get a head cover. You can get a golf ball box or you can get a balance trainer. Literally just something that can go in the way and it doesn't matter if you actually do hit it. But I'm gonna place it target side and I'm actually gonna get you to get it a grip length ahead of the golf ball. And this is a hurdle, it's a blocker. It's something we want to miss. It's a focus to actually miss in our downswing. So all we're looking for is, sorry, let me show you this. If you do this bad pivot on the way back and you swing down steep, you're probably going to hit this. So with a nine, we'd hit this. But with a driver, we obviously wanna miss it. So ball forward, good tilts, good backswing and then just miss it on the way down. Amazing what changing the environment. Nice shot. Amazing what changing the environment does. Soon as you put things in the way, it encourages you to create the motion that you need. And this is really a persuader. This persuades you to do the right movement. Yeah. It's massive, this is. Big one on the way up then again. That's a really high, I mean, you're driving around at nine degrees and they're going really high. 4.5 inches before the golf ball. Yeah, that's good. That's probably better than what I would normally get. Let's do iron. Okay, so with the iron, we've got, again, we've got a few different versions for you here. So one of the drills that we've got is one of my favorite drills, is a two tee drill. So we're literally going to get the golf ball, peg it up, and we're going to place another tee peg somewhat past the golf ball. I like to go a grip length past, again, pretty much. Narrow grip length on it. And just tee it up in the ground like so. And all I'm going to do is I'm going to hit this golf ball here, but I'm going to make sure I hit the tee peg. So again, think with the driver, we'd miss it based on the last drill. But with the iron, we want to be moving towards it. So we hit the ball and then we take that tee peg. Very nice. Yeah. Oh, tee peg has gone. I thought it wasn't there then. Split the tee peg in half, low point 7.9 inches, almost eight inches past the ball now. So this is getting more because he's, you know, these things are persuading him to go even more. They actually work. We're not full of crap. One thing we have got as well, depends on your environment, on the range that you're on. We've actually got a spray lines they have here at the ground, which actually shows you where you should be hitting from. But a lot of the time, you'll see that golfers hit off these lines. Again, it's just really good feedback. Can you hit the ball and then hit the ground after the line? It's a really good focus on you for that. Okay. Third one is our ball striker towel. Now this is great on the grass, but it's also really good on the driving range. And again, this is just a feedback mechanism, allowing us to understand where our low point is. This towel is all about low point training, whether it's for irons or whether it's for chipping or even for the driver. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to place it in the B. Now the towel is there to let me know if I've done a bad thing. It's not my focus. My focus is to hit through the C and the D. Again, I'm just focusing past the ball. If the one thing that you get out of this video with your irons is that you just become really good at focusing past and through the golf ball, you're going to be a better ball striker for sure. Okay. So it's in the B, but I'm focusing on the C and the D. Really working at that attack angle on that one, that low point. Slightly steep. A little bit steeper than normal. I'm in low point now at 8.4 on that one. 8.4 inches past the golf ball. Crush! I think that just shows some of the things that we talk about here, how they can actually impact the two things. Remember, driver low point, iron low point. They should be different. Hope that helps, guys. If it did, make sure you hit the like. And look, if you like our coaching and would like to get coached by us, make sure you head over to meandmygolf.com. Click right here. Thanks again for watching and we'll see you soon.