deceleration in golf swing

Six Golf Tips On Long Distance Driving

Let’s face it. We all love to crush the ball off the tee. There’s something truly pleasurable in driving for distance. For some golfers, it’s the single most enjoyable thing in the game. But hitting long powerful drives on demand takes hard work to learn—even for veteran players with single digit golf handicaps. Not every golfer masters this much-needed skill. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work at it.

One place to start this effort is with your mechanics. Long distance driving takes great mechanics to pull off. Without the right mechanics, you’re lost. The six tips discussed below will help you perfect your long distance mechanics. Knowing how to hit the ball long when you need to will comes in handy when trying to clear water, fairway bunkers, or other obstacles on the course. Long accurate drives can also help you shave strokes off your golf handicap.

1. Add Flex To Knees

Golf tips for long distance driving often discuss shifting your weight correctly. Doing so is one of the keys to hitting the ball long. Sliding, on the other hand, is a power killer. To prevent sliding, add some flex to your knees and point them slightly away from each other—not too much, of course. Adding some flex not only stops swaying, it also harnesses the power of good weight shift.

2. Extend Your Arms

Big swing arcs produce big power. To hit blasts from the tee, work on extending your arms to create a big swing arc. Extending your arms also helps you generate maximum clubhead speed. One mental technique we suggest in our golf lessons is to imaging someone behind you when you swing. Now try to touch that person as you take the club back. Be careful, though. You don’t want to lose your balance.

3. Create Plenty Of Lag

Extended your arms is only half the battle in long distance driving. You also must create maximum lag. This means retaining the 90-degree bow in your right wrist (left wrist for lefties) until just a split second before contact with the ball, and then slapping the club through impact. The longer you can hold the bow in your right wrist before straightening it the better. Bracing yourself against your right quad as you approach impact also helps.

4. Accelerate For Power

Among the biggest power leaks we see in golf instruction sessions is clubhead decelera-tion. Weekend golfers tend to accelerate right up until they make impact. Then, that’s it. They decelerate through the rest of the swing. Some golfers even decelerate pre-impact. Awesome power comes from constant acceleration, so start your swing slow and work your way up to full speed at and through impact.

5. Keep Feet Firmly On The Ground

This advice seems like something you’d take for granted. But as we’ve seen in our golf lessons, some people do it better than others. Two things trigger power: Dropping your hands down at the top of your swing and retaining a strong left arm while shifting your weight onto the ball of your right foot (left foot for lefties) during the downswing. These moves activate your right knee and help drive your right hip through the ball.

6. Stay Loose Through The Swing

Tensing up when trying to hit a bomb short-circuits power. Instead, stay loose through the swing. By loose we mean loose in the right places—the shoulders, arms and hands. These upper body parts must remain flexible. The key is staying loose with your hands. If you tense those up, you’ll tense up everything else. Staying loose through the swing also helps you maintain rhythm.

These golf tips are proven to help you generate power off the tee. But bombing a 250-yard drive is no good if the ball lands deep in the rough. So when it comes to driving for distance, it’s sometimes wiser to take a little off. Drives in the fairway improve your chances of hitting the green in regulation (GIR). The more GIRs you hit, the greater your chances of making pars and birdies and shrinking your golf handicap.

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