Why You Can't Hit Driver Straight or As Far As You Could - Simply Do This

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Transcript Summary- 

So, this week was super interesting because almost every student I worked with wanted to improve their driver. Some were slicing, some were hooking, and others were struggling with inconsistent contact—topping shots or even hitting the occasional great one. But the common goal for everyone? Hitting the ball further. What I found fascinating was that, despite their different swings, they all lacked an understanding of one key concept that completely transformed their ball-striking once they got it. First, they started hitting their driver straighter—which is the foundation before adding distance. Then, I gave them a drill to help increase their clubhead speed, which I’ll share with you in this video.

Before we dive in, if you’re new to the channel, consider subscribing. I release videos like this every week to help improve your game, and I always include free practice guides in the description so you never have to remember everything at once. Now, back to the concept—this is what made a massive difference for my students.

To hit driver consistently well, you need to understand that the golf club moves on an arc, not in a straight line. Think of it like a speedboat towing a water skier—the boat turns, and the skier gets catapulted around the corner. That’s exactly how we generate power in the golf swing. The key here is controlling the low point of your swing, which is directly under your lead shoulder when your lead arm and club form a straight line. If you can’t control this, you’ll struggle with consistency. For example, if your low point is too far back, your club will start moving left after impact, potentially causing a slice. If it’s too far forward, you’ll de-loft the club and struggle to get the ball in the air. So, step one was teaching my students how to feel and control their low point.

A super simple way to train this is using a box. I placed a box just inside their lead heel and asked them to return the shaft of their club to it at impact. Some noticed their hands weren’t lining up properly, or their heads were too far forward or back. This drill instantly gave them feedback and helped them adjust their body positions for a better strike.

Once they got a feel for the correct low point, we moved on to adding power. A common mistake is trying to rotate aggressively through impact, but instead, I taught them to push backward with their lead leg. This movement creates space for the club to accelerate without shifting the low point out of position. It’s a simple but powerful move—pressing back rather than excessively turning—which helps maintain balance and maximize clubhead speed.

From there, we worked on ball position. A neutral position at low point leads to the straightest shot, but for those struggling with launch and distance, I moved the ball slightly forward. This naturally helps launch the ball higher, though it does make the ball start a little left. That’s totally fine—if needed, you can slightly open the clubface to create a controlled fade.

So, to sum it up—learn to control the low point with a simple box drill, use your lead leg to push backward for more speed, and adjust ball position depending on your needs. If you found this helpful, give it a thumbs up and share it with someone struggling with their driver. And if you want to dive deeper into the differences between irons and drivers, check out this video right here. See you next time!

Full Transcript- so I had a really interesting week this week with what it seemed like every student wanting to improve their driver they found you know I had some students slicing it i had some students hooking it i had other students that were making really inconsistent contact they would top it on the ground and then every so often would hit a really really good one everyone wanted to hit as you can imagine the ball further now what was interesting is is they all had very different golf swings however they did have one thing in common none of them understood the concept I'm about to share with you in this video but once they did two things started to happen the first they started to hit driver straighter that was the first tick in the box no point trying to hit the ball longer until you hit it straighter once we got them hitting it straighter I then gave them a drill which I'll share with you also in this video of how they can start to increase their club head speed so they can start to ramp up that yardage super super simple can't wait to share with you now before I do though look if you're new to the channel it's one of your first lessons of mine please consider subscribing i release videos just like this one every single week to try and help you improve your game plus you never have to remember a thing i'll always put a free download or practice guide in that description box below so I'd really love to help you to become a great driver of the golf ball and to do that I'm going to basically give you exactly what I gave them i'll show you the concept of hitting a driver first and it's super important to understand it really helped them it gives them them a lot of aha moments and then I'll give you a drill on basically showing them how they generate consistency and how they ramped up their power so I've got a huloop here i just want to show you a couple of things so the first thing is is if in an ideal world we would literally swing the club basically like this like a pendulum because actually this is the most accurate way of hitting any form of ball but the problem is it doesn't go very far we need some form of kind of power and we need what's called angular momentum so we swing the club not like this we swing it on an angle very much like if you imagine a speedboat you know basically carrying a water skier the speed book comes around the corner on an angle the water skiers behind and he get as a speedboat turns the corner the water skier is actually propelled and catapulted around the corner and that's what generates the power so we play golf for that reason on an angle now what that basically means is as we set up to the golf ball here the club as we take the club back the club works inwards and upwards and on the way down look it works downwards outwards to the right and once it gets to its lowest point it then starts to work back to the target so this is where it's absolutely the dead straight the lowest point of the circle once it gets it gets to the lowest point of the circle where's it going to go it works back inwards and upwards so it's constantly working look on an arc therefore there is one thing that you must must control if you want to be a great driver of the golf ball and that is the low point of your arc now your low point in your golf swing whether it's a driver or an iron is directly in the middle of your lead shoulder here where the lead arm and club form a straight line that is the point when the club gets to its longest and therefore the lowest point in your swing your ability to control that will determine how consistent you are now the players had were you know very very different but they all couldn't control the low point let me show you here so if I'm here this is the low point of my swing right there at the bottom arc now if I move this hula hoop and I move the low point over here right so I'm coming down now i've shifted my body too much over here i haven't got it back to the golf ball where's the club now starting to head as it hits a low point where's it going to head now left of target add an open face to this and you have a great big booming slice that was your slices i then had people struggling to hit the ball up in the air why because what they did is is they had the low point here and then what they did during the swing they kind of in a sense shifted it so far forward that now suddenly the club's actually heading out to the right as it hits the golf ball had no loft on the uh on the on the on the club head and the ball goes along the ground so knowing that the club swings on an arc really really important because you then start to be more inclined to really control that low point of your swing so that was step number one how do we help a player you know kind of learn and feel low point so all I did was grab an old box not this similar to to this one because I think stuff like this basically makes it so much easier for you to feel what to do i hate giving people too many words i think words kind of get lost in translation too many times and I love drills like this because they you know you can try this at home right now and and immediately feel what I'm talking about so low I'm going to put I'm going to line up this box here the lead edge of this box right up with my lead heel here now what I said to the players was I said "Look you should be able here if I put that right there you should be able to see half the ball on this side of the box." And the idea is here is when we strike when we make a swing I want you to make some movements i want you to bring the the the club head and the shaft all the way back to this box like this so it's completely flat that's it they all were different some did this and when they arrived back they realized their head got back to the golf ball but the shaft was off they was like "Oh my god." So they they have to work out a way to get that shaft completely back to here so they learn to feel impact i said to them you must still be able to see the ball some of them move so their low point so far this way I can't even see the ball now that was a really big one for a lot of them that's why they couldn't get any launch they're going to hit it very far suddenly they said to me "Dan it really feels like my head now is so far this side." It's not there but it feels like it doesn't it so suddenly now they were training this motion of this is impact and impact's here look my hips are forward here my body's turning in here i've now got impact i've got the lowest point of my golf swing intact lead shoulders intact everything in place i'm training this simple feel some people would do this where the they would leave too much with the shaft again that's just going to send the ball out to the right so it's just a brilliant way to train the feeling of where you need to get to you're going to get different things from it body positions you're going to feel where your head needs to be there's loads of things that you're going to get from it so the first thing we did from there was really really simple i said "Right let's start off." And what we're going to do is is we're going to make a golf swing and we're going to start with a very what we call very neutral standard ball position we're going to put the ball position right at the base of our low point so we don't want to hit up on the ball we don't want it to hit down on the ball we want to hit right at the base this is the straightest way to hit driver okay so we got ourselves set here and I said listen do a few rehearsals where ultimately what you do is you rehearse this motion here so you kind of imagine the box in front of you here you make a few swings and you get that sensation straight away a few of them were going "Oh my god I feel like I want to do this." But it's now Yes that's how you present an the correct amount of loft on the ball no yes and some of the others didn't realize that we're moving off the golf ball and they realized that would be very difficult to time so now suddenly they start to turn and then come back into the golf ball right so you train that initially right let's do this first a gentle shot to start with so I've got myself There's my low point let's have a look at it it's a little bit left i felt that face was a little bit closer on that one but look at that there so my low point's just a fraction behind that golf ball but again we'll take that right so that was the first starting point right now I gave them 10 or 15 minutes to to really get a feel for this we alternated between the box i said alternate between the box and then come back so you really generate that feel i then said right now let's start to gradually really start to kind of ramp up a little bit of power right there's a one other thing in a second i'll go into about ball position but we'll cover that in a minute now all I then said to him right now you've got an idea where low point is where ultimate the full shaft not just the head not the body the whole shaft goes onto that golf ball there right onto that box so how do you then start to add some power to this well we dispelled one myth straight away a lot of them were trying to rotate through the impact area and I said to them don't do that look at this you've just got the box there now if you want to create room simply just push backwards just push from here i've got my weight on my left leg i'm going to push straight back so I'm taking my back side like this look at this here look I've got my weight on my left leg here and I'm just going to push straight back it's a straight line backwards what this does is create room look to accelerate that club through impact most of them were doing this what does that do shift the low point where backwards but I want to keep the low point intact so once I'm here look and I've got my weight there my low point's in a great place i want to now push backwards i want to maintain that low point i don't want to be turning and this is the optical illusion you see with a lot of players they often get to here they turn their hips so all I said just again start small let's get a feeling of this so we start small just doing this and just imagine here look just push back and tighten that motion you did another thing as I'm swinging down now notice this all great players when they come down they start naturally on their left leg the lead leg here this is where you start the down swing it's what helps you look catapult the club i'm using the my leg to power through people who struggle with distance and accuracy with driver they're on their back leg here and they are on the way down they're moving on to their front leg as they're starting down this is just a huge huge loss of power right so as we're controlling low point and just doing this simple drill here it kills two so many birds if just one simple stone here bang we're controlling low point and we're controlling that acceleration so let's have a look at this in action i gradually ramp it up a little bit now so all I'm going to do is I'm keeping my low point intact here i'm imagining that box but I'm imagining the club accelerating by me using my left leg to push backwards push my hip backwards and out of the way so it looks like I'm rotating but all I'm really doing is this okay let's have a look at this

so that's pretty straightforward yeah so ultimately once you start to kind of accelerate this golf club you'll really start to kind of ramp up the power now what we did with the players is everyone was different abilities some would hit it longer than others but we gave them a routine so one of the things I did was this and you could do this the same so when you hold a driver hold it up in front of you here let it just relax so your arm just rests on your chest what this does is it makes sure that you don't get too kind of left shoulder down or way excess some people have been trying to hit up on the ball so they start leaning way back like this just let those forearms start to level off a little bit at least get this lead forearm and troller forearm almost level just relax like this once you've done that then what I want you to do is start to kind of continue this routine so you can take it to the golf course so now the players that I were teaching they had all very different abilities so we change ball positions for each one of them and I'll go into that in a second but once you've got this kind of really relaxed position here simply drop the club down on the ground to the side of the golf ball and when you make a few swings you now in a sense first of all make them in a sense just imagine that full shaft returning back to that box feel where that impact is there know where their head is you can know you won't be able to see the the the back of the ball there now you can see the back of the ball kind of get that sensation once you've done that once or twice just imagine now accelerating it notice this no turning all I'm doing here is feeling my left leg pushing my hip backwards to accelerate the club and that creates what you'll feel looks like a turn but it's not really it is a turn but it's it's an optical illusion this is creating room for me look to ex accelerate and catapult that club through impact so we've done that so that's your routine now I did change the ball position for each and every one of them because some of them just couldn't launch it up in the air so if you can't if you want to and they weren't hit very far so once we've done a little bit of acceleration that increases distance but they wanted to hit more get more elevation now to do that the easiest way to do it is by pushing the ball further forward in your stance but there's a problem when you push the ball it's not really a problem it's something to be aware of if you push the ball further forward ahead of your low point where's the club going to head it's going to head where left of target now I haven't got a problem with that this is going to lead to a bit of a pull shot but as as long as you understand what's happening you it's just a great way of increasing your distance a lot of people miss this don't understand it so this is my low point here underneath my lead shoulder i'm going to move my stance now so the ball is almost opposite my little toe now this is where the routine comes in i'm bringing my club down straight here most people don't if the ball's too far forward they will go and reach it that would be a disaster all I'm going to do is settle myself down like this put the club leave it a good six inches behind the golf ball i know now my low point just as before is just there there's my box i know then when that club comes around the corner the club is going to be working where upwards and inwards so I know that the ball's going to set off slightly left of target with a little bit but a lot more height and hopefully a lot more distance for you right so for you anyway watch

this so ball sets off look a little bit left of target club paths a little bit left low point slightly behind the golf ball but we're talking little bits it's going to give me that extra bit of elevation that for you is what's going to help you with those extra yards if you really struggle to get that launch you just need to be prepared it's okay for that ball to set off left now if you hit if you do this and the ball starts to pull a little bit all you do is open the club face just a little bit and what that'll do is it will send a little ball set off slightly left but it will fade beautifully but let's show you beautifully back to the middle of the fairway so this is how I would play a real simple fade if I want to hit a lovely high fade all I'm going to do is I'm going to go through that routine soften my arms here put the ball outside of my just on my little toe of my big foot here and all I'm going to do now here is this i'm going to set the face just a fraction open so when that club path uh comes left to target the face is slightly open it's going to get that lovely cut back into the middle of the fairway look at this in action

that should be a little bit higher there we go lovely strike club path left to target fist slightly open up to the target and that's the one that gives me a little bit of a f one of my little fairway finders i really really I really love that one so that is how you start to control the low point of your swing ultimately get the feeling first of all of the full shaft on that ball use a box so you can kind of understand where the body needs to be so so good then learn to accelerate that golf club can I get a feel so it's not just a static motion that's how I accelerate i just simply weights here push back why is this so good because it kills lots of birds with one stun most people are starting the down swing accelerating from the wrong foot like this you learn this feeling you're already telling yourself "This is where I need to be." Right super simple and then vary your ball position high swing speed players I often recommend them just catching the ball right at the base at low point that is the straightest way of hitting a golf shot if you catch it right at the bottom of the arc but a lot of people can't do that they don't have enough club head speed so I'll push the ball further forward of that you just got to be aware when you push the ball almost on your little toe here you are going to hit the ball slightly higher you're going to hit it longer but the ball is likely to start to set off a little bit left of target and that's absolutely fine hitting these little pulls just be aware of that when you do it remember not to go and reach for it you start here and you push your body this way to reach for it you don't reach for it this way that would be a disaster i hope you enjoyed this video if you did give it uh a thumbs up maybe share it with somebody who you know is struggling with driver super simple this one um look I'll put um I did a very similar video for the irons if you want to understand the difference between irons and driver super important check this video out right here of course look if you're new to the channel come and join the community i release videos like this every single week by pressing the subscribe button down here.