Drive for Distance-Address Fundamentals

Drew Shurbet: Hello! I am Drew Shurbet, Head Golf Professional at Quail Run resort in Santa Fe, New Mexico and I am here to show you some address position drills for your driver. These drills will help you become more consistent with your ball striking and your alignment. So as we get started, when we set up in to our driver like Tiger Woods does, we set up with flat shoulders. These flat shoulders are important because when these shoulders are flat, it keeps our body in alignment. If we set up with our right shoulder down, it is going to move our shoulders across a line and help us get the club above the line hitting cut, we do not want that. This way when we set up to the golf shot, we can be aligned, we are not leaning forward or backward. So to maintain a proper position I want you to feel like your shoulders are parallel with the ground and when they are in this position, the ball position becomes very important because the club is working downward, it is working downward the entire time until our hand then is below our left shoulder. At this position is where the club starts to rise.

So if our ball position is too far back, we are going to be hitting the ball on the down swing. This is going to be increasing spin and hitting low little line drives that are not going to help us out very much. Conversely, we do not want to be on the other side either, we do not want the ball so far forward because the club is starting to rise, because if the club is rising when we are hitting with an ascending blow, obviously, our club head is traveling slower than we would like, because it is working upwards.

So the quick drill for you to do and a quick idea is if you would have set up to the ball with your left toe just right on line with it, see how that will take the ball in put it right here on our left chest. That is a pretty good idea as to where our arm is going to be at its lowest point. So when the crease of the armpit, if the club is put there, as we rotate down what you will see, we are hitting right at the flat spot, we are not actually hitting it on the down swing and we are not hitting it on the upswing. This is going to help us become a more consistent driver of the golf ball, it is going to give us more distance and more control. So do not go anywhere. Next we will show you some balance and posture drills.