By Paul Myers
It can be a great feeling to go in for a swing analysis or club fitting and light up the machine with impressive swing speed numbers. You can brag to your buddies about your lightning-quick swing, and look forward to hitting those long drives down the middle of the fairway on the impressive golf distance. There may only one problem – you aren’t seeing those long drives fly down the middle of the fairway on the golf distance that is needed. Instead, your drives are landing well short of your playing partners, even though you have them beat in terms of swing speed.
Just because you can impress the radar gun, doesn’t mean you are automatically going to hit long drives. There are more variables in play than just speed, so some tuning to the rest of your swing may be needed if you want to convert your potential into actual power.
Center of the Club Face
If there is one element that is great to execute time and time again when hitting your driver, it is matching the middle of the club face to the back of the ball…hitting it on the sweet spot. The maximum power will be transferred from your club to the ball when you hit the sweet spot, so that is exactly what you probably want to do. If you make contact out by the toe, or in off the heel, you are going to lose much of that power you worked so hard to create. Not only that, but the shot is more likely to be off line as well. A good swing and solid balance can be key in order to make reliable contact shot after shot.
Lose the Side Spin
The more golf distance a ball travels sideways in the air, the less golf distance it travels down the fairway. In order to get the most golf distance from your drives, you need to take as much sidespin off of the ball as possible. In fact, in the Swing Man Golf member area there are some ideal spin numbers to achieve based on your club head speed and whether you want to optimize for carry or total distance.
Coming into impact with a clubface square to your swing path will help you limit sidespin and can help give you the best possible energy transfer. If you can only pick one or the other, a swing that is on path with a square club face is more or less preferred over a faster swing with a poor position at impact that hits the ball all over the planet.
Get the Right Equipment
Another common way to lose golf distance off your drives even with a fast swing speed is playing a driver that is not well-matched to your game. For maximum distance, it’s important to optimize your equipment by going through a club fitting process with a trained professional. Getting the right club (including head and shaft) that will play to your strength and creating good launch conditions is vital to maximizing yards on your drives. Club fitting sessions are worth the price, and some golf shops will refund your fee if you wind up buying a driver from them after the fitting is complete. Going through this extra step to fine-tune your driver might be a little more work than just ordering a club online, but you will likely be rewarded in the end.
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And, if you would like to add 30 to 40 yards to your drives over the next 30 days, like thousands of our customers have before you, you might consider our unique Swing Man Golf Swing Speed Training.
Use the tool below to find out a.) how fast your swing speed should be and b.) how fast you COULD swing it soon: