Regardless of what level of golf you play, chances are you wish your drive was straight. Even if you’re just practicing in the driving range, there’s nothing more satisfying than a great, powerful, and straight drive.
A long, straight drive is the backbone of playing a good game. We want to make sure that our drives are consistently straight to make sure that our subsequent shots are more simple and easy.
When we think of hitting a drive in golf, the first thing we probably think of is power. We’ve all seen the pros hammer a drive with a perfect wind-up and accuracy, so impressive that it must be copied. But as we all know, golf is never that easy.
Hitting a consistently straight drive is one of the most difficult things you can do in golf. There’s so much that can go wrong in a split second that can change your entire game. A poor or inconsistent drive can ruin a whole game if not properly attended to.
How To Drive A Golf Ball Straight & Long
Club Strike
One of the first things to check when working on hitting a straight drive in golf is where you are striking the ball on the face of the club. It might sound simple but can be one of the hardest things to change about your swing as the face-ball connection is over in an instant.
A ‘toe-strike’ is where the ball flies from right to left, indicating that you’ve hit the ball from the toe of the club, or the section farthest from your body. A ‘heel strike’ is where the ball flies from left to right, indicating that you’ve hit from the heel, the spot closest to your body.
Naturally, this means that to hit a straight drive, you want to be in the sweet spot: right in the middle of the club face. This is one of the more difficult problems to remedy when working on hitting a straight drive in golf, but our next tip should help you work on your strike location.
Angle Of Contact
One of the ways that you can prevent a toe or heel strike is by focusing on your angle of contact. This is the angle of your club as it connects with the ball. You want the club face to be looking at where you’re hitting the ball. If it’s too far angled away from straight down the fairway, your ball will fly in the direction of your angle of contact.
Your angle of contact should run in parallel to the ball. Imagine that the ball is a cube with straight sides. Your club face should be able to fit squarely against that straight edge to hit a straight drive. Making sure that your angle of contact is parallel to the ball before you take your swing so that your club strike is in the center can be a great part of your pre-shot routine, like the golf waggle, which is another way of making sure that all your shots are consistently straight.
Check Your Swing Path
Just like working on your club strike and angle of contact, working on your swing path should be an important part of your practice routine. Your swing path is not only an important factor in determining the power of your shot but its direction too.
If your swing path comes too close to the inside of the ball, the side facing your body, then your ball is likely to fly right. If your swing path comes too far to the outside of the ball, the side facing away from you, then your ball will fly to the left.
Once again, you’re looking for your swing path to be right in the sweet spot, and chart a straight line as your club swings through the ball. One way to practice keeping a straight swing path is to place two soft objects, as your club head covers, on either side of the ball. If your swing collides with either of these objects, then you can tell which side of the ball you’re hitting.
Grip Strength
You might be surprised at how much your grip strength can affect whether your drive is straight or not. When we think about how to hit straighter drives in golf, it can be easy to latch on to the big factors, like your swing path, but these bigger actions can still be affected by your grip. When driving, a lot of golfers become too invested in power over technique, and this can lead to gripping your club too tightly.
Gripping the club too tightly can lead to you twisting the club as you swing through the ball, which can affect your club strike and your angle of contact. A good way to ensure you’re gripping your club correctly is to work on eliminating tension in your golf swing.
The most common way is to check the grip before it came in your hand nicely and smoothly and you could hold it comfortably while playing the shot. Nowadays there are also custom-fit grips that you can buy as per your requirements.
Build Your Stamina
if you are an amateur then it is very difficult for you to hit long and consistent drives. Hitting a straight and long drive makes a considerable impact on your score and handicap ranking even if you are a professional player. But if you are an amateur it will not only boost your score but also dramatically improve your game and handicap ranking.
It is very important to build your muscle and stamina for long shots that’s why beginners can’t hit long and straight drive shots. However, on the other hand, mid-handicappers and low-handicappers don’t face these problems because they already have the muscle power that is required to hit long shots.
Correct your stance
The secret to hitting a long and straight drive is to open your stance and lower your body and put your weight a little bit back so that when you hit the shot you don’t lose your balance. The longer you have to hit a shot the more backward you have to move your club like a pendulum and completely rotate your body with the club.
All that’s left is to swing your arm and don’t forget a nice follow-through. A great follow-through can make your shot succeed or fail. When you hit the shot, you have to shift your weight toward the target to add extra force to your drive.
Perfect Driver
It is one of the most important factors in a great drive is that you have to choose a driver that best suits your gameplay and makes you comfortable while hitting. There are many brands in the market but we recommend choosing the renowned brand. Famous brands normally make drivers with the best technology and material which provides maximum results. however, there are brands in the market that provides the best value for money.
Sweet Spot
The sweet spot is the point exactly between the middle of your club face where all the weight is focused. If you exactly hit the ball on the sweet spot, you will gain maximum ball speed, distance, and forgiveness. That’s where you will gain maximum benefit upon the hit.
If you hit the golf ball on the toe end of your club the golf the ball will fly from left to right and this is referred to as a “toe shot”. if you hit the golf ball from the heel end of your club toward your body the ball will fly off from right to left and this is called a “heel shot”. So, to hit a straight and long drive you have to hit the ball right at the center of your club.
Put Tee high
The biggest mistake amateur golfers do is to place their tee closer to the ground which results in a missed hit as their club will make an impact with the ground and divert while they try to hit a solid shot. You always have to place your tee a little higher from the ground so that your club doesn’t make contact with the ground. But makes sure that the tee is not much higher than the ground which will also make the golf ball hit a little higher of your club face resulting in missing the sweet spot.
Lose your Grip
The final adjustment is to lighten your grip pressure at the address. Because if you’re like most
golfers, you hear the term “grip it and rip it” and want to kill it. In reality, if you have a death grip on your driver, you are adding tension in your forearms. When you have tension, it’s easy to get off tempo and not be fully relaxed throughout the swing.
So instead of trying to hold the grip for dear life, practice on the driving range with as light of grip pressure as you can. While it might seem a little awkward at first but believe me it will greatly improve your drive.
Flatten your through-swing
The final key aspect of hitting straight drives and making sure your swing is on the optimal path throughout your whole swing. Some amateurs have a high – nearly vertical – finish to their swing, which suggests they’re swinging too far below the plane and can lead to hooks off the tee. A great, and simple, drill to help you swing on a plane is the headcover drill.
Simply place a headcover on the ground inside your golf ball and behind it, so it’s inside your target line. If you swing below the plane on your downswing, there’s a good chance that you will hit the headcover. So, you have to avoid it at all costs. Combine all of these elements when practicing and we’re confident you’ll be consistently hitting your driver dead straight in no time.
Don’t obsess over fairways
Fairways aren’t everything. We tend to focus on the binary of whether or not we drive it in the short grass, but being just off the fairway with a shot at the green is decidedly different from being in the rough behind a tree — or, worse yet, in the water. You don’t always have to aim down the middle of the fairway if that means taking on unnecessary risk, points out course management expert Scott Fawcett, who regularly charts courses for Tour pros.
That same logic means you shouldn’t be sacrificing a ton of distance off the tee to hit just a few more fairways, Fawcett adds. “You simply won’t hit your 3-wood in the fairway much more than the driver. Dropping back is giving up 30ish yards on 100% of tee shots to hopefully hit 5-8% more fairways; that is a bad tradeoff,” he says.
Don’t Move Your Head too much
It’s the simplest tip that we all tell ourselves at least once every game – keep your eye on the ball, not where you want it to go. As you drive through the ball, your body should turn to face your target before your head, which should follow the ball. Keeping your head straight is also essential for following the tips above.
Keeping your head straight and your eye on the ball is the best way to keep the mind-muscle connection strong when playing golf. To have a proper club strike and angle of contact, you must have your eye on the ball, otherwise, it could go anywhere! If hitting straight drive-in golf is your goal, then your next goal should be consistently hitting a straight drive. A consistently accurate long game is essential for successful play in golf and can help you improve in other areas the more consistent you are.
While these tips will be most useful when applied to driving, there’s no reason why they can’t also be taken into account with your other shots. The angle of contact and your club strike is just as important with a putter as they are with a drive.
Summary
Summarizing this guide on How To Hit a Straight Drive. Focus on those key moves, get in good positions early, and then unwind through impact. Becoming a great driver requires a blend of great technique, performance practice, and great decision-making in play. All that’s left is to practice hard the more you practice on these points the more professional you will become and improve your game. If possible, you should get feedback from a professional player while practicing. He will give you beneficial tips and tricks that will boost your game. They say that “consistency and practice will lead to perfection” so you have to work hard and practice your game along the shots.