I Wish Someone Had Shown Me This Driver Secret Sooner

Welcome back to the new and improved Testing the Tips, where I, as an average golfer, test Out all the theories, the drills that are provided to you by the leading YouTubers out there, and I'll be deciding whether or not I think they'll help my game. Ultimately yours. I'm also pleased to announce that this series is brought to you in partnership with SeedGolf. And a few days ago, I watched a video featuring Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods. They're not bad either, and Rory explains how he's a bit more consistent with his driver than he used to be. The two fundamental principles you adopt in your game will likely be reflected in mine. And to yours. Now, I'm not suggesting that by the end of this video you'll be driving a ball like Rory. McIlroy, but what you will hopefully do is recognize some errors that are in your current swing and perhaps be able to implement some basic corrections. Well, it's here, ball up, ready for the absolute monster that I'm about to hit, but before we Get there, what's it all about? Well, Rory ironically talks about explaining to Tiger how he drives the ball more consistently. and what he does is he starts off by creating what he calls a straight line between his Lead left arm and the driver's head. So for me, at least what I think I'm adopting, is something very similar. So there's no break in the wrist, and there's no club before ball. At this point he's got, or rather behind the ball, he's got very much a straight line. that he places his forearm down into his driver head, and I think that's pretty simple and straightforward, and what he tries to do and what he explains is what gives him that a very, he talks about how he used to swing the ball to the top of the backswing, drop inside and hit that kind of drive from the inside, which we've seen a lot, and it produced variable results as he explained. Whereas with this, the clubhead stays on the same plane, so he's not looking to drop. inside, he's aiming to keep it flat, and to be honest with you, when you Just get into this very basic position and work on something very brief, I don't know, half quarter swing, you can see the kind of logic—if I were to hit the ball right now, I'd probably Hit it farther than most of the times I try and hit the driver. Because I'm maintaining a very steady, single-plane motion, there are no wrist movements, I'm not trying to roll the wrists, I'm not trying to make things happen at impact, and I'm certainly not to change the swing plane when I start the downswing. So I really love that concept. I've even hit it with some wedges and nine irons on the previous hole while I was just Getting warmed up for this, and it relates back to all of your game, in my opinion. So all you're doing is simply setting up a straight arm and the takeaway becomes nice. and uniform between your arms, this V shape that it forms in your arms, it sort of engages the body because we reach a point where we can only go so far, and we're beginning to turn and it's a very straightforward setup for a driver that lets you easily access that takeaway position yourself and get things started in a very stable position. I'll hit a ball in a minute, don't get me wrong; in fact, let's hit a ball now with just Adopting that kind of straight-arm position, and let's see what happens. Right, so straight arm in, he plays the ball again very much off at the inside of his lead. foot He talks about the other thing this does is that the way he delivers the ball is consistent. in terms of angle of attack What a lot of golfers at our level do, lads, is pick the driver up quite quickly. and quite steep, which often means we'll be delivering it quite steep as well. As you know, with the driver we're trying to hit with a bit of an upward blow, and if you do your practice swings, those half swings, you'll soon start to get a feel for it be very different from the one you currently adopt. It also helps with how we attack or the angle of attack. So we're straight there, we're back and we're through the ball. And the ball flight is truly a positive ball flight in terms of its high launch. ball We're experiencing a slight curvature from right to left, which is likely due to me still getting used to it. Overactive with those wrists. But all in all, not a bad drive—I felt very comfortable at address, and maybe even more importantly, Try it and see what it does to you, and notice how different it is from your current setup. up But there is a phase two to how Rory generates his power, and once again we aren't going to be driving 330 yards on the fly, but we are going to realize how he gets from his right foot through the ball, engages the hips, and generates the power and distance which doesn't come from swinging all your arms, it very much comes from the lower half, the The whole body and top half are engaged, and that's the part I'll explain to you next. In phase two, we don't need the golf club; we ideally need a medicine ball or a ball. a football of some sort, a shot put if you happen to have one lying around, but the basic principle Let's use that shot put as an example of how a shot put will bend down onto his Right half, generate the power, store the power, then explode onto the left side And that's very much what we see in the golf swing. Rory talks about training in the gym, where he'll hold a medicine ball against his chest and swing it. the right side, and then he'll step up and really push off that right foot onto the left side and generate that explosive power, and again, if you stand still, forget it your golf ball, go into the backyard, leave your golf club behind, get in the Back garden, get your address position, then get yourself—no need even to carry it. Anything, let's be honest with you, turn onto your right side and then explode onto your Alright, so we're going to turn sharply and then swing, then figure out if you had a golf club. in your hand is that the kind of motion you're making with the driver, because what I've seen for years, most people swing like this, so it'll be all arms; they'll have a lot of energy, and they'll wonder why the ball flies 150 yards while they're swinging at only 95 miles per hour. An hour, well that's because they're not storing any power, they're not using their lower body. They're not engaging the torso; they're letting so much go to waste in terms of that energy. resource, so that's it; you don't have to watch anymore unless you want to. Just hang fire because I'm going to see if I can adopt both. The first drive went down the left-hand side. Let's see if we can. Make a correction and get a drive worthy of Rory—so straight arm, back, and then we're Really trying to get into this one so back, oh my word and that's a drive, that's still, I hope the rear camera caught that because we've absolutely launched it, and if I'm Honestly, that took a lot more effort in terms of pushing through than I would normally expect. try to adopt it as well—that was definitely for the camera, but I certainly realized that that's What I need to be doing is a bit of a shocker, and I almost wish we had some kind of flight. Scope launch monitor connected to see how far that went, but hopefully we captured the ball flight. started center, moved a little bit onto that left-hand side—that's a whopping drive, and you know yourself when you've generated power that was far different from the first shot we hit and to be able to sort of feel that explosiveness through the swing is a very different feel than I would normally have, that's it, nice and simple, try to keep it straightforward, I hope the explanation It's simple, isn't it? Straight left arm, get that forward, start practicing throwing a medicine ball. in the backyard, and all of a sudden you'll be world number one—it's that easy. Thanks for watching, see you soon.