How To Pick The Right Driver Length

Owner description: This is a driving range only. There is a golf course nearby. This place is fantastic. $6 for a bucket of balls and 2$ beers. Max, the pro, helped us with our swing, virtual giving us a free lesson which we found invaluable. Please add this site as it is a gem not to be missed.

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Golf: How To Hit Long And Straight Drives

You know that elusive feeling when your drive flies far and true down the fairway? Imagine being able to capture that perfect golf swing every time? Rickard Strongert, VideoJug's golf expert en vogue, tells you how.

Step 1: The set-up

Take your normal set-up and make sure that your aim is good, with your shoulders parallel to the target. Lean your upper body slightly to the right, behind the ball, so it will be easier to turn your body and shift your weight to your right foot in the back swing for a more powerful position. You can measure the angle of your upper body by holding a club against you, one hand on your chest and one on your belt. Lean forwards until the club passes between your legs. Then lean to the right until the club touches the inside of your left leg.

Step 2: The swing

It is very important to keep your muscles relaxed as you swing, as a relaxed muscle is faster than a tense one. Start your back swing with a simultaneous rotation of your hips and upper body, turning them fully as you complete it. To ensure sufficient upper body rotation, maintain the triangle shape between your arms until halfway through your backswing.This ensures you swing in a wide arc, so the ball travels further. Think about throwing a ball: an outstretched arm would send it a lot further than if it was close in to your body. At the moment the club strikes the ball, your shoulders should be back parallel to the target like at set-up, so that the club approaches the ball in a straight line and meets it square on. This way, the motion of your arms and hands accelerates the club head through impact, with all the power of the swing focused through the ball in a direct line with the target, dispatching it as fast and as straight as possible. A common mistake when attempting a long drive is to start the down swing before completing the back swing. When this happens, the shoulders are open at impact and the club hits across the ball from the outside, resulting in a short drive sliced to the right. To find out more, see our videos "why we slice the ball" and "avoid slicing". There is hardly any better feeling than when your drive flies long and straight down the middle of the fairway. So bask in the afterglow of your success as you walk tall and proud to your second shot.

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Golf: How To Warm Up On The Driving Range

Golf is a sport, but how to warm up properly is a mystery to some! Golf gymnast Rickard Strongert gives you the run down on the basics to help you swing without regrets. Warm up those important muscles and joints so your body can move freely.

Step 1: Warm up with pitch shots

If you look at professionals on the driving range before a round, you will see that almost all of them start their warm-up by hitting pitch shots with a sand wedge or pitching wedge. This lets your muscles warm up slowly, and helps you get your swing into a nice flowing rhythm.

Always warm up with a club on the ground parallel to the target to ensure that you set up square every time. As you will appreciate if you have seen our video "Why the set-up makes your swing", it is better to hit 25 balls from a perfect set-up than 200 from a faulty position.  The pitch is among the shots least practiced by amateurs, but one of the most commonly played in a round of golf. Hitting pitch shots is not only a good part of your warm-up, it also ensures that you don't neglect to practice this crucial shot.

Step 2: Practice body rotations

A good way to start warming up is to practice the body rotation. Hold a club across your shoulders and stand upright. Start rotating the club, along with your shoulders and hips, backwards and forwards around your spinal axis and in a horizontal plane, making sure your body follows through until you face forwards. Then lean forwards from your hips, take your set-up position and continue to turn around your spinal axis to practice the correct body rotation for your swing. If you feel your hands are not releasing the club enough to allow the head to pass freely through the ball, take your grip and then hold the club horizontally in front of your body. Start to swing the club around you, backwards and forwards, with a relaxed rotation of your hands and body. If you are turning correctly, the club head will stay at a constant height above the ground throughout the swing.

Step 3: Practice half swings with pitching or sand wedge

Once you have practiced your body rotation, take a pitch or sand wedge and hit between 5 and 10 half swings.Then play five balls with alternate numbered irons, say 9, 7, and 5, before moving on to hybrids and fairway woods.Now take out the driver.Concentrate on swinging the ball away rather than hitting it, as shown in our video "swing not hit", and make sure you keep your balance as you swing.

Step 4: Finish with more pitches

Finally, you can return to the pitching wedge or sand wedge to finish off with a few more pitch shots and reinforce that relaxed, flowing motion.

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How to Drive a Golf Ball

   For those who are looking to put their tee-shot in play, what follows are methods to improve the distance of your drive, learned through many rounds of golf and many hours on the rang.

Step 1:

      Have proper equipment. Today's equipment and balls are not necessarily tailored for 7 - 8 degree drivers. That is a thing of the past. Getting the ball up in the air on a good trajectory is the first step to driving the ball longer. Many touring pros regularly use 9 and 10 degree drivers and drive the ball 300 plus yards. Today's average driver loft for amateurs is 11.5 degrees. Plus, you will get much more consistency with a more lofted driver.

Step 2:

       Start with your front foot in line with the ball to give it more loft during the set up. When you go for your backswing, you should shift your weight backward. This will give your swing more power. 

Step 3:

      Use the proper grip pressure. Even though you may think that gripping harder and swinging harder produces results, that is absolutely incorrect and is probably why you don't get consistent distance. Cal Ripken, a hall of fame baseball player for the Baltimore Orioles, recently indicated to the Golf Channel that his grip pressure on the bat (on a scale from 1 being easiest to 10 being hardest) ranged from 2-4 for perfect release. The great Harry Varden,is given credit in the movies for this teaching, but actually instructing legend, Phil Galvano first introduced the idea that you will find that the great players indicated that the grip pressure should resemble one holding a bird without crushing it but also not letting it go. The tighter you hold the club, the less it will release throughout the ball. Hands must be tension free. Try it at the range and watch for the results.

Step 4:

     Keep the start of your downswing calm and unhurried. This enables you to build up speed, so that the golf club is still accelerating when it reaches the ball.

Step 5:

      Stay flat. Your driving wood should stay along the ground for at least the first 20 to 25 percent of your swing. If your club is lifting up, you will pop the ball up and not get that long, boring drive that you see the pros hit regularly (when the ball takes off like a missile and slowly climbs to a beautiful height and tracks down the fairway).

Step 6:

     Keep the angle on your leading hand. Many amateurs tend to flip the hands forward in an effort to get the ball in the air, which defeats the purpose of having good equipment (as noted earlier). The leading hand (left hand for most players, right hand for southpaws) should be angled down towards the ball on the downswing. It's like you are hitting the ball with the back of left hand. If your left hand is flipping up on the downswing, your contact will not be solid and you will get consistent misses with your wood. Keeping the angle starts the ball low and lets it climb on its own through your generated power.

Step 7:

     Pick a spot on the ground that lines up with your target and, from your address, stretch your wood towards it. If done correctly, your arms should form a "V" shape with both arms fully extended. If you have a tendency to bend your left arm early, that will retard distance; keep your "V" as long as possible before it bends at the finish of your swing and you will find yourself getting much more distance.

Step 8:

        Finish the golf swing over your left shoulder (for right-handed golfers) or right shoulder (for left-handed golfers). Don't be in a rush to look up and see where the ball went. If you did this correctly, the ball went straight.

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Foraging for Fitness at the Driving Range

      (Reuters Life!) - Hitting golf balls at the driving range can lift the spirit, but does it also tone the flesh?
The exercise potential of swinging a club may be limited, experts say, but the more fitness you bring to the range, or the golf course, the stronger your stroke will be. "Most people don't think of the driving range or playing golf as a form of exercise, but it is," said Robert Yang, a sports performance coach and founder of the Performance Lab in Encinitas, California. "The professionals make it look smooth like butter but there's quite a bit of power and strength involved," Yang said. He explained that wielding a driver can be compared to hoisting a weight so heavy you can only lift it four times. "That's how much load or torque there can be on the body." But don't expect to swing your way to streamline shape. "The concept of getting in shape from just hitting balls is pretty tough." Yang said. "You wouldn't be able to change your body shape." The volume of exercise is simply not high enough. Yang said even on a golf course, people actually swinging the club for only two-and-one-half to three minutes. "The rest of the time you're just walking," he said. Conversely, Yang said fortune, on the golf course or on the driving range, favors the fit. Each body has physical limitations, whether it's lack of strength or flexibility. If you improve them, you'll hit the ball further," he said. "Whether 16 or 60, you should be focusing on strength and power training to improve your golf game." He said older, often more sedentary, golfers, can transform their game by working on their posture. "They'll stand up straighter. They're able to rotate more efficiently. That improves their golf swing." Yang said the fit golfer represents a fairly recent paradigm shift in a sport not typically regarded as requiring strength or speed training. "Tiger Woods basically started that whole thing," he said. "Younger players are much more into fitness, or they've been athletes all their lives." Taking a golf club back over your head, following through and moving your body to strike the ball, involves a range of motion not experienced by most people on a day-to-day basis, according to Kevin Burns of the American Council on Exercise. The good news is it benefits muscle groups in the core, back, shoulder and abdominals that might not get a lot of attention. The bad news is that's almost all there is. "Outside of adrenalin rush of striking the ball and hitting it a long distance, there's very little cardiovascular benefit," said Burns, a group fitness instructor based in Mankato, Minnesota. Burns said the driving range compares unfavorably to the golf course. "Walking nine to 18 holes has tremendous cardiovascular benefits, especially if you do it on a regular basis," he explained. Any activity that will get someone off the couch and moving is a good activity, he said , but an overall fitness plan should include cardiovascular, range of motion and weight-bearing exercises. Yang concurs. "If your goal is just to swing a club and be active, then you'll achieve the goal," he said. "If you're looking to lose five inches on your waist, that's not going to happen."

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