Generally, iron shots are played with the ball on the floor. This means that regularly striking the sweet spot is extremely difficult if your club is travelling upwards at impact; the club will quite often hit the ground before the ball… not good. This means that good iron striking requires the club to be travelling downwards at impact (see above image). You can still get the ball into the air easily though due to the club’s loft (which produces a strike below the balls equator and makes it go up). A driver though doesn’t have much loft, and so hitting downwards in the same way as an iron will cause a lot of very low tee shots! The most efficient way to hit a driver is, therefore, to swing the club upwards at impact (see image). The ball is played from a tee with the driver to make this possible, but many amateurs continue to tee the ball low, ruining their chances of making the most out of their driver. The moral of the story then is to tee the ball relatively high to allow you to swing upwards and maximise your distance. If you find this difficult, try this. Place an empty golf ball box a few inches ahead of the ball, the object being to hit the ball off the tee but miss the golf ball box. If you hit the box, you are probably hitting downwards, miss it and your club will be travelling upwards, and the ball will no doubt be travelling noticeably further than before! Notice John Rahm’ Angle of attack in the photo below. 5.2 Degrees UP. NOT down. He manages to help maximise his distance doing this. |