How To Hit Longer Drives - Top 5 Tips

How To Hit Longer Drives

If you’ve been wondering how to hit longer drives, keep on reading, and you’ll find plenty of tips and tricks that should help you up your game.

Get Clubs That Leave you Feeling Confident

If you take your golf game seriously, you need to put in the work to improve your game. Consider your golf clubs the tools you need to be an extension of that work. For any job you decide to take on, the first step is ensuring you have the right tools to see it through.

To get the most out of a set of clubs, regardless of how much you did or did not spend on them, you need to ensure they give you optimal performances.

The best way to do that is by having the latest clubs that fit to your body size and playing style.

Improve Your Setup 

An easily corrected but common mistake is standing too close or too far away from the ball.

Correcting a faulty setup will improve every facet of your golf game, especially driving distance. Poor setups can result in several issues that will reduce the length of your drives. 

Standing too far from the ball forces you to bend over, creating a bad posture. This stance causes you to lose power by being unbalanced. 

Standing too close to the ball affects your balance as well. Being too close will force you to mainly use your arms to swing, limiting the power threshold your torso and lower body create when you swing.

The best stance for a solid, consistent swing puts you in a balanced, athletic position to swing the club. The ideal stance should be one where the butt of the club is facing your belt and is half a foot from your thighs. 

This stance should be the same no matter what club you are using. The golf ball position is determined by the length of the club.

To determine the best distance, address the ball without a club and let your arms hang down naturally. 

A balanced, athletic stance will improve your driving distance and accuracy for a more consistent round.

Get a Grip

There’s no textbook way to teach someone how to grip a golf club. Each person’s hands, wrists, arms, etc. move differently and, because of that, no one grip will work for everyone. 

Turn on a major golf event event and zoom in on the grips of each player. The first thing you’ll notice is they all grip their clubs differently.

And depending on what shot they are trying to accomplish, they might change their grips. A grip might change depending on angles and the power needed to hit the ball. 

While there is no perfect grip, there are some basics to watch out for when trying out a grip of your own and some questions you should ask yourself.

What Part of Your Hand Are You Using?

The most significant part of how to hit longer drives is focusing on what area of your hand you’re using when gripping and swinging your clubs.

You should use your fingers more than your palms. Put simply, palms are for putting. Holding your grip in the palms of your hands provides the stability that’s needed to nail a long putt. 

To use your wrists properly and create maximum distance on your drives, the shaft of the club should rest more in your fingers.

How Much Strength Are You Using?

Monitoring your grip strength is essential. If you are seeing your shots begin to hook or fade more than usual, try adjusting the strength of your grips. Holding the club too strongly or too weakly can affect distance and accuracy.

How Often Do You Change Your Grip?

Establishing a routine grip increases the chances of you improving your game with that grip. One of the keys to improving your golf game over the long run is consistency.  

When you find the right grip and approach to the club, it’s important to do it the same way each time out. Building this routine will keep you in the right frame of mind and your swing becomes more natural and balanced.

Torque That Torso

The number one thing that separates professional golfers from amateurs when it comes to driving distance is the power that PGA golfers generate with the turning of their hips.

To improve driving distance, you’ll need to increase your club speed. One of the best ways to do that is through a good hip turn.

Maintaining that hip turn from the backswing to the follow-through will generate the club speed needed for those big drives.

While you may not have the hip flexibility or body type that the top golfers in the world have, there are a couple of ways to improve your hip turn that will increase your driving distance.

Practice Swinging Without a Club

Place your arms across your chest with your right hand touching your left shoulder and your left hand touching your right shoulder.

Choose an imaginary target in front of you. Turn your hips in such a way as to force your shoulders away from the target. 

Now, use your hips only through the back swing and follow through. Not using your arms will force your body to focus on hip movement which is so important in creating club speed.

Half-Swings at the Driving Range

Half swings at the driving range. The point of this drill is not to use a complete backswing but to focus your attention on the movement of your hips. Turn your hips fully but only bring the club back halfway. 

This movement will keep your attention on your lower body and show you how much power can be added to your swing with proper hip motion.

Weight Training

The recurring theme in all golf improvement training is the importance of technique and body position. Most sports are geared towards being bigger, faster, and stronger than your opponents.

Golf is a sport of finesse and skill that rewards discipline and consistency.

With that being said, there are areas of your game that can be improved by training specific parts of your body with weights and targeted exercise.

Kettlebell swings and snatches are ideal weight training exercises for golfers. The lifting motion is a more natural one than classic weightlifting movements and can mimic the body movements needed for golf swings.

With so much power coming from your lower body, exercises like squats and box jumps are especially important for those looking to add distance to their game. For added effectiveness, focus on lighter weights and exercises that emphasize flexibility and balance than just added muscle.

Another prime source of power for driving distance is your core. Exercises such as medicine ball slams, heavy ropes, and planks can add strength to your core. A strong, balanced core is essential for creating torque with your torso and power throughout your swing.

Conclusion

The techniques listed above are just some of the most productive ways to increase the length of your drives.

There are several more tips and tricks out there that can be just as effective. Just like the section about hand grip, there is no universal list of tips that will work for everyone. 

EXTRA: What are the best drivers for long-distance driving?

When choosing a driver for long distances, there are several elements to consider. Head size, launch angle, and shaft flexibility are some of the most important factors. 

A few of the industry leaders and most popular drivers on the market for long-distance driving:

• Callaway Golf Epic MAX Driver- Designed by AI. Slightly more expensive but uses cutting-edge technology for increased performance
• Cobra Golf 2019 F9 Men’s Speedback Driver- Large forgiving face. Only two loft angles are available.
• TaylorMade M6 Driver– Suited for all skill levels. Fairly expensive.

FAQs

Below are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions regarding how to hit longer drives.