Four Secrets To Launching It

More valuable tips to help improve golf swing performance in the following article by Jack Moorehouse.

If you’re serious about getting more yards from your drives—and shaving strokes from your golf handicap—work on launching the ball. It’s a golf tip not always covered in golf lessons. The higher you hit the ball, with the right amount of spin, the father it goes. Take Hank Kuehne. He’s among the PGA’s longest hitters. He uses a driver with nine degrees of loft. Most PGA players use seven or eight degrees. Weekend players couldn’t hit a driver with these lofts. For them, a good loft for a driver is 10.5 degrees or above. Keep in mind that golf has no uniform equipment standards. So determining driver loft accurately is tricky. When measured the same way, most drivers come within a degree of the loft printed on the club. Driver loft performance stems from several factors. Only ball flight can tell you a club’s true dynamic loft —a function of measured loft, center of gravity, moment of inertia, and face roll. An adjustment to your stance and swing will helps generate more loft and more yards off the tee. Below are four golf tips on generating more lofts:

Flare Your Forward Foot

In golf instruction sessions you’re taught to flare your left foot (right foot for left-handers) about 45 degrees on your drives. It’s a good golf tip. It increases the speed at which the hips unwind during the swing. Kuehne, however, turns his toes in. That’s because his hips unwind too quickly. Turning his toes in restricts hip movement during his downswing. Weekend golfers usually need to speed their hips up, so they need to flare the front foot. This in turn lets them swing the club faster.

Hit A Fade, Not A Draw

You may have told during a golf lessons to hit a draw off the tee. A draw often generates more yards because of the roll. But you can also hit a fade for distance. Jack Nicklaus did. Hitting a fade let’s you swing the club hard without having to worry about hooking it out of bounds. Weakening your grip helps when hitting a fade. To do that lay the thumb of your gloved hand on the shaft so that the thumb and forefinger points more toward your chin rather than your right shoulder (left shoulder for left-handed golfers.)

Sweep The Ball Off The Tee

The easiest way to get more distance off the tee is to change your angle of approach into the ball. In other words, hit up on the ball, not down. If you have an over-sized driver use longer tees. This gives you the optimum angle to launch the ball. For weekend golfers, optimum launch angle is anywhere from 10.5 to 14 degrees. To sweep the ball off the tee, set your spine angle at address so your front shoulder is higher than your back shoulder.

Pause At The Top

Pausing at the top is the last of the four golf tips. Start by taking the club all the way back. Then, pause at the top for a split second before committing to the downswing. Many weekend golfers get out of sync by making a sloppy transition to the downswing. Some golfers start their downswing before they’ve even completed their backswing. That’s not good. Also, if you pause at the top, you can swing as hard as you want on the downswing and still stay in rhythm. To generate more power, golfers often try to swing the club harder than normal. That doesn’t always work. If you really want to get more distance off the tee, use loft to launch the ball. To help do that, flare your forward foot, sweep the ball off the tee, and pause at the top of your swing. Also, hitting a power fade can get you more distance, if hit correctly. Incorporating these golf tips into your swing will help you get more yards off the tee and, hopefully, help whittle down your golf handicap.

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How To Break 80