Lesson tee
Turn The Face Down For Bigger Drives
Stop trying to help the ball up
Roll Your Arms: For more swing speed, rotate your forearms as you start the downswing.
If you frequently hit your driver low on the face, even top the ball, you're probably releasing your wrist hinge too soon on the downswing. You're trying to help the ball get up by making a flipping motion with your hands. It's impossible to generate much clubhead speed doing that.
To create more speed, here's a great swing thought: Rotate your forearms counter-clockwise as you start down, turning the face of your driver to the ground (above). Another good feel is to get the back of your glove pointing down, as if you were going to drag your knuckles along the turf. This move will help you maintain your wrist hinge longer coming down. Remember, power comes from clubhead lag, where the clubhead lags behind your hands until your wrists release at the bottom of the swing.
One word of caution here: Because you're closing the clubface earlier than you're probably used to, you might start hitting hooks, until you adjust your path into the ball. Feel as if you're swinging out to the right of the target. Do that, and you'll turn those left misses into power draws.
Rick Smith, a Golf Digest Teaching Professional, is based at Treetops Resort, in Gaylord, Mich., and Tiburón, in Naples, Fla.
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