Using power efficiently in the golf swing is something that most amateur golfers have not mastered. Oftentimes, when golfers try to swing harder they get out of sorts and lose their timing and delivery of the club.
This week, Golfweek’s fitness guru and long driver Averee Dovsek demonstrates how lowering and raising your hands can help control the direction of the golf ball.
Being in control of your driver doesn’t have to be just for the professionals. This tip will stop you from wanting to snap your driver shaft in half and will hopefully make it your new favorite club in the bag.
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This week, Golfweek’s fitness guru and long driver Averee Dovsek demonstrates how to take the club back to three different positions to create a backswing that is repeatable and comfortable.
These steps are easy to practice alone and pausing at each spot will help with muscle memory. This will result in a more consistent backswing and accurate delivery to the ball in the downswing.
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If you’re looking for more instruction, click here.
This week, Golfweek‘s fitness guru and long driver Averee Dovsek demonstrates a tip to implement in your swing to get a bit more club head speed when you think you’ve peaked.
It’s important to practice this tip on the driving range before the course, as it can feel a bit more aggressive than your traditional swing.
If you are searching for that extra couple of yards, lifting the heel is a must-try.
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If you’re looking for more instruction, click here.
Everyone can think of that one friend who hits their driver a bit further than the rest of the friend group.
Everyone can think of that one friend who hits their driver a bit further than the rest of the friend group.
Whether they’re an ex-baseball player, another type of athlete or just a guy with good genetics, maybe the topic of long drive has been brought up. World Long Drive is back, but what exactly does it take to win a men’s competition?
Colton Casto, a 27-year-old from Snohomish, Washington, won this last weekend in Memphis, Tennessee, with a winning ball of 380 yards, and this victory was a long time coming.
Casto has been working with his coach, Bobby Peterson of One Stop Power Shop, out of Newton Grove, North Carolina, since 2018. Peterson has produced many world champions, such as Kyle Berkshire and more, but Casto’s journey has been a lengthy one.
Peterson owns the OSPS training center, where his athletes hit on simulators and on a lit, outdoor driving range. Training typically consists of multiple hitting sessions, resulting in hundreds of balls hit. Casto has spent eight full weeks at OSPS since the beginning of the year.
When Casto started with Peterson in 2018, his swing speed was around 140 mph and his ball speed topped out at 210 mph. The top ten long drivers swing speeds are now in the 155-169 mph range with ball speeds averaging in the 212-230 mph range.
“Colton and I have put in a lot of work. After the last competition in Denver, he decided to come back to OSPS where we worked on some things to correct his 14 to 15 inch low point in his swing, ” Peterson said. “This was causing him to close the face too quick and flip it. We drilled on that all week long pretty intensely, putting in 200 to 400 balls a day.”
“I couldn’t even talk after the win. It has been such a grind to get to this point,” said Casto.
Added Peterson: “He did the work, came to Memphis and it all came together. I couldn’t be prouder of what he did and of all the OSPS members. We had 10 in the field last week, and seven made the top 16. That’s two wins in a row for us, and we look forward to the next event.”
You can learn more information about World Long Drive here.
Most golfers are on the hunt to gain more clubhead speed. We know that increased clubhead speed generally means more distance on the course — and who doesn’t want to hit it farther? There are a lot of key components to hitting bombs, but your hands, arms and wrists do the majority of the work.
This week, Golfweek‘s Averee Dovsek explains what she does to improve and increase her clubhead speed when practicing for competitions and in her improvement season. Hint: it’s all about repetitions and building confidence.
If you’re interested in any of Averee’s fitness content, click here.
If you’re looking for more instruction, click here.
Callaway, TaylorMade, Titleist, Mizuno and Ping are all featured … but which driver was No. 1?
The PGA Tour’s final wrap-around season recently concluded and the fall schedule has just two more full-field events remaining before the Tour takes a break for the holidays.
Last season, the PGA Tour’s driving distance average was 299.8 yards per measured tee shot, a season-ending record and up 3.6 yards from 2021’s average of 296.2. Cameron Champ led the PGA Tour in driving distance average at 321.4 yards, edging out Rory McIlroy by 0.1 yards. In all, 99 golfers finished the season with a driving distance average of over 300 yards.
Distance is a major component of effectiveness off the tee, but accuracy and how far you leave yourself from the flag also play a role. For that reason, Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, which factors all those things and reveals how much of an advantage (measured in strokes) a player has over the field, is the best measure of effectiveness. The players listed below ended the PGA Tour’s 2021-22 season ranked as the top 10 in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, along with the drivers they were using at the end of the season.
Many who go to the driving range don’t have a proper practice routine and aren’t making the most out of their time.
One of the great things about golf is that every player is striving to get better. Improvement is measurable and the opportunity to hit the best shot of your life is always lurking around the next fairway.
Many players are quick to spend time on the course, but fail to put in time at the driving range or at short game facilities. Those who go to the driving range may not have a proper practice routine and are not making the most of their time. This has many guessing why they are not shooting the scores they think they are capable of.
The answer is simple: you are not practicing intentionally and with a purpose.
Here are five tips to optimize your time when you are practicing at the range:
“So, we misread the data and we continue to make the wrong adjustments in the game,” said Mickelson.
Phil Mickelson took to Twitter last Friday and told his 770,000 followers that he heard rumors the United States Golf Association and the R&A, the two governing bodies of golf, are thinking about reducing the maximum allowable length of a driver from 48 inches to 46 inches.
The six-time major winner and World Golf Hall of Famer was, not surprisingly, against that idea. After all, this is a 51-year-old who loves nothing more than, “hitting bombs and hellacious seeds.”
It has now been six days, but Mickelson is not done arguing his point.
On Thursday Mickelson posted a three-minute video on Twitter and to his 1.2 million followers on Instagram stating that he thinks the USGA is using the wrong data to make decisions with regard to distance and equipment rules.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CTUzFhJBYVh/
The groove rule change that Mickelson refers to in the video went into place in 2010 and reduced the size and shape of grooves, making them smaller and their edges less sharp. His point is the groove rule was intended to make things more challenging for elite golfers, but in reality, recreational players who struggle to generate spin and hit greens in regulation wound up being punished more than elite players.
“So, we misread the data and we continue to make the wrong adjustments in the game,” he said.
Instead of shortening the maximum allowable length of drivers, Mickelson wants the USGA and R&A to look into modifying the ball.
“If you remember when the liquid center golf ball was the ball of choice 20 years ago, there was more weight in the center of the ball than there was on the perimeter,” he said before explaining the physics of how liquid-core balls behave.
“What if we just got rid of the perimeter weighting so the ball wasn’t as stable and we had more weight in the center of the golf ball? We’re going to get more sidespin. And who’s that going to affect? The guy that hits the ball 300 yards, as opposed to the guy who hits 200 yards. Yeah, they might get more offline, but (recreational golfers) hit it so short, it’s not gonna get in as much trouble as the guy that hits it farther.”
The 2021 Titleist Pro V1, Pro V1x (Titleist)
Mickelson is certainly not the first person to propose changing the rules governing the ball to reduce distance or want to debate golf ball performance. However, while it’s nitpicking, Phil’s memory is a little off.
Twenty years ago, the Titleist Pro V1 revolution was starting on the PGA Tour. It debuted at the 2000 Invensys Classic in Las Vegas and nearly 50 pros put the ball in play, including the eventual winner, Billy Andrade. Mickelson, using a Pro V1, came in second that week and then won the Tour Championship two weeks later with the solid-core Pro V1.
Twenty-five to 30 years ago, pros did use wound golf balls that had liquid-filled inner cores.
There are a lot of things the USGA and R&A could do to change the performance of today’s premium golf balls. For example, balls could be mandated to spin a minimum amount in driver tests or not exceed over a specific speed in driver tests.
Golfweek has spoken with numerous engineers who specialize in driver performance and been told, consistently, that making drivers shorter, driver faces thicker and less springy, or making driver heads small in volume would have a much bigger impact on weekend players than on pros.
But when it comes to driver length, Mickelson might be the one looking at the wrong data.
According to Club Champion, which has 85 locations throughout the United States, only five percent of the golfers it fits for drivers end up in a club that is 46 inches or longer. The vast majority, approximately 70 percent, use a driver that is 45 to 45.5 inches in length. Another 10 percent of golfers Club Champion fits end up in a driver that is 45 inches long or shorter; 10 percent buy drivers between 45.5 and 46 inches in length.
With only a handful of exceptions, manufacturers sell drivers that come standard between 45 and 45.75 inches in length.
So, if the USGA and R&A bring the maximum driver length down to 46 inches, only a tiny percentage of golfers would be affected. However, Mickelson could be one of them.
It is also worth considering that Mickelson, who has played a few Champions Tour events this season, may want to continue using a longer-than-standard driver when he starts playing the 50-and-over tour more frequently. A rule change announced in late-2021 or 2022 would not likely go into effect for two or three years after the announcement, which might coincide with the time when Mickelson, who has a lifetime exemption on the PGA Tour, shifts to the Champions Tour.
The USGA and R&A are currently soliciting feedback and information from equipment manufacturers, as well as conducting studies related to distance. The comment period regarding its areas of interest is scheduled to end on November 2.
See which clubs the PGA Tour’s best drivers are using off the tee to maximize distance and accuracy.
It all starts with the tee shot. Modern professional golfers attack holes right from the start using a combination of power and accuracy in an attempt to create easier approach shots and scoring chances.
The U.S. Golf Association and the R&A have determined that distance is playing too large a role in golf, and the game’s governing bodies are researching what should be done to stop the trends of players hitting the ball farther and courses growing longer. While they investigate various options, pros continue to grip it and rip it.
No one drives the ball better than the 10 players listed below, the leaders in strokes gained off the tee in the 2019-20 PGA Tour season. See which clubs they use to gain an edge over the competition.
A strokes gained average of 0.5 means a player gains half a shot against the field average. So a player with a strokes gained off the tee of 0.5 would be two shots better than average over the span of a four-day tournament.
