Welcome to Shaving Strokes, a GOLF.com series where the game’s brightest minds share their tips to help you, well, shave strokes! Today, GOLF Top 100 Teacher Steve Bosdosh shares a drill to help you hit longer drives.
Hitting longer drives than your competitors will always put you at an advantage. Even if you miss the fairway a few more times, getting the ball closer to the green off the tee is always key. Data has proven as much, and that means you should be looking for ways to hit the ball longer yourself.
One of the simplest ways to add distance is by dialing in your swing in order to hit up on the ball. If you can get your attack angle in the right spot, you’ll be hitting it longer than ever before without a bit of speed training.
If you want to increase your attack angle and hit longer drives, check out the simple drill below from Top 100 Teacher Steve Bosdosh.
How to increase your attack angle
Many of the recreational golfers we teach at my academy at PB Dye Golf Club swing their drivers with a negative angle of attack and with an outside-in path. This crates excessive backspin and produces drives that come out low and then balloon up in the air, often with a slicing shot shape. Worse yet, the harder they swing, the more spin they put on the ball, which only exacerbates these problems.
The key to hitting bombs is not always more clubbed speed. Instead, you should be focusing on hitting up on the ball.
Teaching yourself how to do this doesn’t require a radical swing change. All you need to do is set up a simple drill with your headcover and a couple of tees.
Simply peg a tee in the ground about one clubhead length in front of your teed up ball. Push the front tee in the ground only slightly so that the tee remains tall. Then, make a few practice swings as you try to avoid the front tee post-impact.
Feel what you need to do in your swing to avoid that front tee. When you avoid this tee, you will feel a more positive angle of attack, which will rid you of that nasty over-the-top move that produces a slice.
As you continue doing this drill, don’t be afraid to experiment. Try tilting your spine away from the target. Try feeling like your head stays behind the ball through the swing. Try swinging a little more around your body or more from the inside. Try turning your lead shoulder more behind the ball or over your trail foot, and maybe setup at address with more weight on your trail foot.
Once you find the feel that produces the desired result — missing the front tee — stick with it. Then, put the ball back on the trail tee and use that same swing feel. The ball should come out with a much better ball flight and fly farther down the fairway.
