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In this concept video, we're going to discuss losing distance with the driver compared

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to the iron.

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So I had a member question come in about how come he hits the ball far so comparatively

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as far as some of the people he plays with.

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He hits the ball just as far with the iron but with the driver he's a good 20, 30 yard

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short.

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Why would some golfers hit the ball proportionally further with their iron compared

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to the driver?

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That's what we're going to investigate in this concept video.

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There are two major reasons why you might be disproportionately longer with the iron.

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One I call a speed plateau and then two would be your launch numbers or your angle of

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attack number and spin numbers and launch are probably two iron based.

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I talk about the goal with the driver is to have more of a sweeping blow where I'm

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going to hit flat or at the worst one degree down maybe two degrees down but ideally if

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I'm trying to maximize distance I want to hit closer in the three to five degree uprange.

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In order to do that, most pros have a access tilt of about 20 degrees or their upper

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body is a good 4 inches behind their lower body at the point of contact.

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Good rough kind of guideline for that would be at impact.

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The left leg is pretty vertical but compared to that the left shoulder is just slightly

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behind the golf ball.

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That would be a good position for sweeping the golf ball and hitting slightly up on it.

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That can either come from playing with ball position for a lot of golfers who play it

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too far back or playing with access tilt the Jackson 5 movement or the amount of hip tilt

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in the golf swing.

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That one helps solve if I'm hitting too much down on it because what can happen is if I'm

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hitting two down and with a what's what it is why if I hit two down on the ball let's say I hit

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four or five degrees down with my iron and I hit four or five degrees down with the driver.

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Well if I squared the club face then the because the driver only has nine ten maybe 12 degrees

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a loft on the high end if I'm hitting down on it it would launch really low.

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So what most golfers do is when they hit down on it they tend to add loft either by

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bringing the handle back with a big flip movement or by just leaving the club face open.

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Either way that produces more of a spinney ball and so you lose a lot of the distance that you

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could get to that spin. So I forget the actual calculations but I remember from an article

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back in 2000 the track me and put out that if you go from hitting three degrees down to three degrees

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up with a 95 mile per hour club head speed you could gain up to 42 yards or something like that.

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So without changing your speed perhaps you're losing distance just because you're hitting down on it

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too much like you are an iron. But the other option the speed plateau sometimes sneaks up on golfers

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especially I've seen it a lot with my older golfers. So I'll post up a picture of the Torpro

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average distances put out by track man and you'll see that as they go from their irons to their

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fairway wood to their driver there's a speed jump in how fast the club head is travel.

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That's largely because they're swinging their hands close to the same speed but the club gets

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longer and longer and so the club head ends up moving faster and faster. What I tend to find with

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some of my golfers is they reach a plateau where after a certain point they can't swing the club any

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faster because as the club gets longer they actually unconsciously can't swing in any faster so their

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hands slow down so the club head ends up traveling about the same the same speed for a

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couple different clubs. This is a really common complaint of golfers who say that they hit their

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three wood further than their driver. Oftentimes when I put them on track man you'll be able to see

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that they swing the three wood and the driver the same the three wood they launch a little bit higher

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and with lower speed the higher launch gives them extra distance so they also tend because the

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club is a little bit shorter you'll hit the ball more in the center with the shorter club then you

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would typically with the longer club so they the ball speed with the same club heads speed might even

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be a little bit higher with the three wood compared to the driver other than when they just hit

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that driver perfectly. So unfortunately the second opt that speed plateau you're not going to know

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unless you get on some type of launch monitor device but I don't think it has to be a top of the

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line one I think you'll be able to see anything that's measuring club heads be relatively accurately

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whether it's off by a little bit as long as it's consistent it'll help you see if you're reaching

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a speed plateau and you're just not swinging the driver any faster than the three wood is that

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can easily cause you to lose distance compared to golfers who might be able to to swing their hands

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the same speed and increase the club speed with the longer club. If however it's more from the angle of

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attack so you are increasing speed but you're noticing that you're not hitting it further

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then I would investigate either getting two upper body dominance of the club getting a little bit more

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outside or getting too much of a lunge so that the shoulder is past the ball and having to have more

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of a flip. Both of those could cause too many of a ball with too low of a lunge and then that

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combination is typically going to cost you a good bit of distance so if you're struggling

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understanding why you might hit the driver not quite as far as you hit the irons proportionately

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hopefully this video gives you a little pathway to investigate figure out which of those two it is

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if it's more the speed plateau then you're going to have to do some a little bit of speed work

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if it's more the angle of attack then that can be accomplished with some a lot of our drills that

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focus on getting more of this flat spot or sweeping bottom this way as opposed to more of a downward

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strike which we treat which we promote with the irons. Okay so with a quick little demo with the iron

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we're going to tend to be more on top of it in order to strike down but if I did that with a driver

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I would either pop it up, launch it really low, or launch it in a spinny fashion so if I do that same thing

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which is hard for me to override but if I do that same thing I'm going to tend to lose it off a

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little bit to the right because I needed that extra loft and it had a little bit more of a climbing

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ball flight compared to let's get a little bit better ball position so I'm going to play that

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more towards my front shoulder I'm going to have a little bit more lower body sweeping action

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if I try to swing about the same speed you'll see that that takes off on a much more

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kind of flat flight gets to its apex and really cruises um I probably swung a little bit faster because

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I was more comfortable in that position but that ball went about 40 yards further than the first one

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where they felt like I swung about the same speed I just transferred it'll heck of a lot more energy

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into the golf ball with that second technique