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While all the golf clubs look somewhat similar, they are actually different tools. While there is little difference between a 7 and 8 iron there are dramatic differences between a wedge and a driver.
In this video, we discuss the major differences between an ideal driver swing and an ideal iron swing. With a driver, your goal is to hit slightly up on the ball. With an iron, your goal is to hit slightly down. Since the driver swing never hits the ground, and since the iron swing does, it is logical that you need to have some variations for what you do with each club.
Yes, ideally with both clubs, you are going to have similar swings. You are going to transfer speed from your lower body, to your core, to your shoulders, and then to your arms. And the movements of the hands and arms are going to be quite similar. The biggest difference is what the upper body must do to direct the club differently. In both swings, the lower body is going to slide toward the target 4-5 inches, but the upper body is going to do something different during the downswing, specifically, during the release. With the driver, the upper body will tend to shift away from the target a couple inches, while with the iron, it will tend to shift more in front of the ball, or more toward the target.
Tags: Driver, Concept
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In this concept video, we're going to go over the overview of the difference between hitting an iron and hitting a driver.
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So you'll see that pieces of the stockful swing are going to be more applied when I'm hitting an iron and less applied when I'm hitting a driver vice versa.
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So the biggest difference is with an iron, I'm trying to hit a few degrees down for five or six degrees on the upper end.
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I'm trying to hit down on the golf ball. There are two major things that are going to adjust whether I'm hitting down or whether I'm hitting up.
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But with an iron, I'm trying to hit down with a driver. I'm trying to hit relatively flat or a little bit up.
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If I'm airing more towards I want extra distance, I'm trying to hit more up.
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So the things that are going to adjust where the bottom of my swing is.
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Is where this bone, which is called your sternum, where that is located in space and what my arms and hands are doing.
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Okay? So with an iron, I want to make sure that I'm hitting down, which means that on average the upper body, if I were to hang this right from here,
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right if I was to take this stick, if I got to a good impact position and drop it straight down from my sternum,
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you would see that that would be a little bit ahead of the golf ball.
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The interesting thing that I see on 3D is there's about this four to five inch lateral shift in a full swing.
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With the upper body, the best drivers of the golf ball are going to have their upper body compared to where they start.
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Go about two inches backwards to impact, where iron's they're going to go in inch to two forwards.
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It'd be the difference as if I was throwing a ball with driver, I kind of plant and stop versus with an iron.
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It would be more of a plant and go with it.
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So one of the things that one of the first things that I check when someone is struggling with either hitting their iron or hitting the driver is the location of where that upper body is.
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With the driver, I'll show you in a second. So with an iron, you'll see that as I come down my upper body is going to be more ahead of the golf ball so that when I make contact,
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the bottom of the swing is basically extending out in front of my sternum.
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Because my arms are going to be being pulled by this really heavy object, the golf clubs moving a hundred miles an hour and has a significant amount of inertia at that point.
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So my arms are just going to get pulled out in front of my body like so. So they're roughly going to get pulled out in front of where this is.
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When I take a driver, if I was to see that ball up, the impact position is going to be much more with my upper body behind where my lower body or behind the golf ball.
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With the iron, it would be more like this with the driver, it's more like that. So there's a lot more of this Jackson 5 side bend and there's going to be a lot more of this elbow staying in towards my side with a driver.
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We'll go into the specifics of those in the iron video in the driver video, but just as a general overview, making sure you understand where this upper body is is going to help control that low point.
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So if you're struggling with the driver, make sure that your upper body is not drifting forward. That's going to give you too much of an angle of attack down, which is going to be a kiss of death.
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An easy way to tell is if your upper body is getting forward, you're going to tend to have the option of either hitting low poles or kind of a low kind of push fade.
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If you flip your wrists, then you'll hit it really high, but it'll be weak.
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But it could be mostly because of this upper body drifting forward.
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