Hello, members.
I'm Tom Lehman, president of the PGA Tour Partners Club.
Welcome to this edition of the club's game improvement video series developed exclusively
for you, our members.
All videos in this series feature instruction from some of my good friends on the PGA and
senior PGA tours.
They'll take you from the pre-shot routine to the finish swing and cover everything from
tee to green.
And also, you'll have the chance to get into the minds of these great players and find
out what they're thinking about when they're under pressure.
We've also acquired the services of Martin Hall, one of the country's top golf instructors,
to show you practice drills and provide you with tips that are guaranteed to help you
improve every aspect of your game.
So get ready.
There's a lot coming up in this edition of the game improvement video series.
PGA Tour Partners Club presents the game improvement video series developed exclusively for members
of the PGA Tour Partners Club.
This video series features instruction, insight, and tips from the game's top players, as well
as supplementary drills and instruction from golf's top teaching professionals.
The very best of the PGA Tour and senior PGA Tour lay out their blueprint for better golf.
In this edition, Partners Club president Tom Lehman brings you his knowledge on driving
for distance and accuracy.
Hi again, members.
I'm Jim Kelly.
Welcome to the game improvement video series developed to improve every aspect of your
golf game.
It's my pleasure to be your host.
You know, it's the hot topic in golf these days.
300-yard drives are becoming the norm instead of the exception.
So in this edition of our video series, PGA Tour Partners Club president and past British
Open champion Tom Lehman will provide you with his special insights on how to get more
distance off the tee without sacrificing accuracy.
In addition, we've acquired the services of Martin Hall, director of instruction at the
Ibis Golf and Cutlery Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
And Martin will supplement Tom's insights with his own tips and practice drills to help
you gain those extra yards off the tee.
But before we get started, let's get to know our club president, Tom Lehman.
Tom Lehman's trek from anonymity to celebrity was a long journey.
PGA Tour cards in 83, 84, and 85 were quickly followed by years of disappointment on the
Asian and South African tours.
But through all of this, this unassuming Minnesota native handled it with dignity and class.
I believe it's possible to just lay it all out there on the golf course and give it your
very best and be very competitive and hate losing and love winning.
And you've got to be able to handle defeat, you've got to be able to handle the circumstances
that come at you with dignity.
We all fail.
I mean, I've failed a million times.
I've done everything you possibly do on a golf course probably at some time or another.
By and large, I've tried to conduct myself in a way that's not going to embarrass myself
or golf in general.
Tom Lehman is the champion of the 1990 Ben Hogan Reflection.
Tom's eventual success on the Buy.com tour led to his fourth PGA Tour card in 1992.
This time, however, the results would be much different than his three previous campaigns.
You are the winner.
You are the winner.
You are number one.
You are number one.
You're doing the best.
Doing the best.
You are the winner.
You are the number one.
You are the winner.
You are the number one.
You are the winner.
You are the winner.
Surprisingly, despite five wins, three Ryder Cup birds and Player of the Year honors in
96, Lehman felt unsatisfied.
Quite frankly, I don't feel like I've won enough in my career.
I've played some great, great golf, but I don't have as many victories to show for
it as I think I could have.
I'd like to win more often, more regularly over the next three or four years.
Obviously, the bigger the tournament, the better.
One of those big tournaments is the United States Open.
From 1995 to 1998, Lehman was in Sunday's final group, establishing a rather dubious
mark.
The US Open is probably the one I'd want to win the most.
All the majors are great, but the US Open just has that special, to me, that special
mystique or just something about the high, rough, and the narrow fairways, and it's more
a survival test, which kind of fits my game, kind of fits my personality.
I've been somewhat successful in getting myself into positions to win.
Probably my biggest disappointment in golf is the fact that I haven't won one yet.
Hopefully, yet is the key word there.
This stage of Tom Lehman's career presents a closing window of opportunity.
Some of the game's best players throughout the years have had some success after the
age of 40, but certainly it seemed that their best golf was behind them, a fact that the
former number one player in the world is well aware of.
One of my goals in golf in 1992 when I got back on tour was to be number one in the world,
and so I can't say that I achieved that.
People say, well, it was just a week.
Well, it doesn't matter.
A week is better than no week.
So that was one of the goals that I achieved that I'm very proud of, actually.
Can I get there again?
Boy, that's a tough road to hoe.
I'm not really sure that I have enough time to work on my game hard enough to get there.
With three kids and being 43, to have that kind of single mindedness to get to number
one is, I'm not sure I have the desire to do that.
With the senior PGA tour on the horizon and a golf course design career already in motion,
Dom Lehmann is not looking exclusively to the future just yet.
What could be more fulfilling, not to mention intimidating, than to step up here on the
first tee with all your buddies?
Stick that tee down into the ground, take a practice swing, and then proceed to bomb
a monster drive right down the middle of the fairway.
Well, members, we're going to provide you with some helpful tools to make that all possible,
but hold on because first, of course, we've got to build a solid foundation, and that
begins with the fundamentals.
There's nothing quite like the feel of taking a big swing with a driver and hitting it right
in the middle of the club face, hitting it long, and hitting it straight.
While there may be several ways of making that swing, it really comes down to a few
fundamentals that most good players all do the same, starting with the grip.
The grip is the foundation, I believe, of the golf swing, and there's really three
ways you can hold on to the club.
You can have a very neutral grip, you can have a strong grip or a weak grip, and many
great players have had one out of the three.
By neutral, which is kind of what I have, I like to get the Vs in my fingers pointing
towards my right shoulder.
So, as I hold the club, I have this V formed by the thumb and my finger, and the VSV all
kind of going right up here towards my right shoulder.
That's a fairly neutral grip in today's golf world, much like this right here.
Now, neutral grip, really to me, means that you can kind of start your swing at ground
zero without having to make any kind of adjustments in your swing to make up for a bad grip.
Now, I'm not saying a strong grip is a bad grip or a weak grip is a bad grip, but they
do make you make adjustments throughout your swing.
But many players do have strips that are very strong, groups that are very strong.
Paul Aizinger, notably, has a very strong grip.
He holds the club.
Instead of being neutral, he moves his hands way to the right this way.
His left hand is way more over at the side, right hand underneath, which allows him and
other players with strong grips to get the club face very shut down at impact.
So they can get their hands way forward at impact, taking loft off, and it literally
allows you to hit the ball much, much further.
Now, if you have a weak grip on the other hand, which would mean that your hands move
to the left, left hand over, right hand way on top, now there's no way to get your hands
forward at impact because the club face would then be wide open.
And so this grip is a good grip for hitting it straight and in play, but usually not very
long.
Johnny Miller, I believe, was probably the best player ever with a really weak grip.
His right hand was way on top of the club and he just played control golf.
But in today's game, really, it's become much, much more a power game.
And so you see more and more players coming on tour, or much many more good amateur college
players with very strong grips.
And so the way the game is played today, if you were to go weak versus strong, definitely
go strong.
So how do you know which grips should work best for you?
Experience.
You've got to get out in the range on the golf course, strengthen your grip, weaken
your grip, see which works best.
But a general rule for me is that if the ball is going right, if you're hitting it kind
of high and you're fading it, you need to strengthen your grip.
If the ball is going low and it's hooking, you need to weaken your grip.
It's kind of very sensible type things.
But basically, experience will tell you what to do.
The first thing I'd like to talk about to complement what Tom had just mentioned is
how you put your hands on the club.
Now let me say right now at the outset, your hands will be the biggest influence on the
face of the club of any part of your body.
People have said of late, take your hands out of the golf swing.
That's nonsense.
There is a role for the hands to play in the golf swing.
They definitely influence the face of the club.
How you place your hands on the golf club is critical to how you play the game.
Pay attention to that because it really matters.
Tom Layman mentioned two special players, Paul A. Zinger and Johnny Miller.
Great players they are.
Very different ways to hold the golf club.
Very different styles.
I'd like to just elaborate on that a little bit.
Paul A. Zinger grew up and his coach, John Redmond, encouraged him to have a grip in
which his hands were turned well to the right of the shaft.
Now to illustrate this, I'm going to take two tees, put them between my thumb and forefinger
and give you what we call here the Paul A. Zinger grip.
Now that's hands turned well to the right of the shaft.
And Paul A. Zinger, PGA champion, tall winner, great player.
Important to understand if you have a Paul A. Zinger grip, then what you need as you
swing through is what we might call a Paul A. Zinger release.
Hands turned to the right in the set up means that you must feel the club faces up as you
swing through.
We'll call that a reverse roll.
Paul actually thinks of keeping his knuckles up to the sky.
So if you have your hands turned to the right, the compatible release is to feel that you
hold the club face under.
Now Johnny Miller was quite different.
He was at the other end of the spectrum.
Johnny Miller had a position of his hands where those two tees would have been straight
down the shaft, perhaps even a touch to the left of the shaft.
Now that's been called over the years.
That's been called a weak grip.
Now here's the point.
If you have a Johnny Miller grip, you better have a Johnny Miller release.
Hands turned slight to the left means that you've got to have lots of rotation through
the ball.
Now that's compatible with a Johnny Miller grip.
Now the point here is you cannot be Paul Miller or Johnny A. Zinger.
Don't have Johnny Miller's grip with Paul A. Zinger's release.
You will hit wild slices to the right.
Don't have Paul A. Zinger's grip with Johnny Miller's release.
You would hit wild duck hooks to the left.
Got to be aware of these things.
My preference for position on how you place the hands, I like to think as I look at my
club head, there's a clock face in front of me.
I think that that's 12 o'clock.
I like my left hand to be turned so that that T points to about 1 o'clock.
That's sort of a bit of an anti-slice grip.
I mean that's my miss.
I tend to leak it off to the right.
So I have a bit of an anti-slice grip.
If you slice the ball, you probably want to have what I call that 130 grip.
And that has a really very beneficial effect on getting the club to turn over and take
the slice out of it.
Now Tom also talked about grip pressure and goodness is that important.
I've taught golf in 14 different countries and of all the people I've taught, almost
all of them hold the club too tightly and have too much tension in their arms.
Two drills you should try at home here that will alleviate that problem.
First one Tom Watson gave me, doing a clinic with Tom at Pebble Beach and he said when
he gets tight, he can't feel the weight of the club head.
And so this is how he goes about rectifying that situation.
He turns the club the wrong way up and makes about 10 or 12 swings back and forth and back
and forth.
Obviously you can't feel the weight of the club head here because there isn't one.
And then what he'll do, having made about 10, 15 swings there, is turn the club the
right way up and go ahead and swing.
Now if your grip pressure is light enough, you will be able to feel the weight of the
club head.
If you can't feel the weight of the club head, you're too tight.
The benefit of that drill is when you do it, you'll feel a real difference when you do
that.
Now the second drill I'd encourage you to do to help you realize how little pressure
you need in your hands and your arms to hit the ball is just to do this.
Don't even need a club.
You'll spend hours doing this at home.
Put your arms up to your side like so, shake the pressure out of your arms and then just
let your arms drop.
You could call that a gravity arm drop.
There is no doubt in my mind you don't need any more pressure than that with your hands
and arms when you're swinging the club down into the ball.
And of course that's so different than most people.
They get up here and the veins are popping out of the forearms and they're grabbing,
and even if they manage to make contact, of course it doesn't go very straight.
So two grip pressure drills.
Turn the club upside down.
That'll help you feel the weight of the club head.
Do a gravity arm drop.
That's what your arms should feel in the down swing.
And if you do that, you're well on your way to playing a lot better golf.
In addition to your grip, your posture is fundamentally extremely important.
And this is the reason why.
Having good posture will allow you to make a good turn both away from the ball and through
the ball.
It won't guarantee a good shot, but it'll help you to make a good turn and that's really
important.
When I see someone with good posture, I think immediately of someone like Tiger Woods or
Charles Howell or Ty Tryon, Adam Scott.
Some of these younger players have tremendous posture.
And what they do is they keep their head up and their back straight.
Very often I see players who are playing poorly or just poor players in general with their
head down and their back slouched.
Having a slouched back, having a curved spine makes it impossible to make a turn around
your spine either back or through the ball.
And so these good players will stand with their head very high and their back very straight.
Just watch those guys and you'll see what I'm talking about.
From there, what do the legs do?
The legs can either be too deep in the knees, too straight in the knees, or just right.
Obviously just right is just right, but if you get too deep this way, what happens is
you start swaying your knees back and through and usually through impact you raise up.
If your legs are too stiff, eventually you'll drop down into the ball, which is no good
either.
So by starting with your knees slightly flexed, you'll probably keep that same flex back and
through throughout the swing, which gives you a very level golf swing.
And so posture is so important.
I just can't stress it enough.
Head up, shoulder back, knees slightly flexed, and bend at the waist.
Instead of squatting down to get to the ball, you bend at the waist to get to the ball.
So now you have a posture that looks something like this.
So instead of being like this, go to that right there and your turn will be better every
time.
Another thing Tom talked about, which is really important, and I want to elaborate a little
bit now, is posture.
Why it's important, what it does, and what you can do to improve your posture.
As a golfer, it took me a while to understand why posture is important, so I'm going to
share some of those views with you.
Posture really has a big bearing on how far you hit the ball.
Yes, that's right, how far you hit the ball.
Let me show you that.
I'm going to take a little leash, dog leash I've got here, and show you that when something
rotates around an axis, it rotates at its fastest when it's rotating at 90 degrees to
its axis.
You can see that string is rotating at 90 degrees to my forearm.
That's when it rotates its fastest, and just by coincidence, that's when it stays in the
same plane as it swings up and down.
90 degrees to the axis.
Now why is that important?
Well, let's look at the geometry of golf clubs.
Now, it just so happens that most golf clubs are made with the shaft going into the head
at an angle of about 60 degrees.
Sometimes it's 62, sometimes it's 59, but for simplicity we'll say 60 degrees.
So stay with me on this one.
If the angle of the club, the angle of the shaft going into the head is 60 degrees, how
many degrees would I need to bend forwards to make a 90 degree angle?
And of course the answer is about 30 degrees.
Now biomechanics tells us that most tour pros have somewhere from between 28 to 30 degrees
of bend forwards when they set up to the ball, and that's why.
Because it gives them a 90 degree angle between the shaft and the spine.
That's putting the club and your body in the best possible position to produce speed and
consistency when you swing.
Now that's the why of posture.
Here's the how of posture.
How do you get that 90 degrees bend?
Most of the people that I see set up, the posture is really poor.
As Tom demonstrated, they look something like this.
The knees are bent, the chin's buried in the chest, not much good going on there.
Well we'll start with a drill, we'll call it the military address position, and here's
how I'd like you to do it.
You can actually do this without a club, you could do this at home.
Standing as if you're on a parade ground where your hands would be behind your back, your
shoulder blades would be pulled back, your chest would be pushed out, your chin would
be up.
Very straight, very erect position.
And then you would bend at the hips from there keeping your chin up about that 30 degrees
we talked about.
Flex your knees just a fraction and then let the arms hang.
And they'll find their own position.
That gives you the distance you should be standing from the golf ball.
Now that's a very good posture.
That's quite different from just sitting at the knees, military address position again,
chest out, bend, flex ever so slightly, let the arms hang.
Now that puts you in a great posture position.
You can get the same effect by doing this.
Taking a club, putting it against your back and it will touch you in three places.
Should do.
The bottom of the spine, the top of the spine, and your head.
Those would be the three contact points.
And then as you keep the club touching you in those three places, bend at the hips.
This will feel a stretch in the hamstrings for a lot of you.
Flex the knees just slightly.
Let the chin lower just a bit and there's your ideal posture.
Coincidentally good posture gives you the right distance from the golf ball.
I've heard it said, well you need to stand further away from a driver than you do with
a sandwich.
Well just in case it escaped your attention, most drivers are somewhat longer than sandwiches.
As you'll see with this demonstration, whether I bend at the hips with a driver or do the
same with a sandwich, my posture is just about identical.
The only reason that I appear to be standing close to the ball with a sandwich is of course
because the club is shorter.
So no deliberate effort on your part to stand nearer or farther away from the ball depending
on what club you're using.
One last point I'd like to mention here about getting in that postured, balanced, athletic
position, getting ready to go, is you need to have a sort of a springiness, a cat-like
readiness to strike that golf ball.
You need to be balanced.
And here's the best drill I've come across to show you that one.
Johnny Miller showed me this.
He said he always felt at his very best when he was set up, when he was ready to go, it
would be easy for him to do that.
And that's a great drill.
If you're on your heels, you'll fall back.
If you're on your toes, you'll fall forwards.
If your weight's too far right or too far left, you'll be out of position.
So once you've got yourself postured, last check would be do that and then you're ready
to go.
Get yourself in the best possible position you can that puts the odds in your favor and
we'll move on from there.
A third important fundamental of hitting a good drive is your alignment.
You've got grip, you've got your posture, and now to kind of put it all together is
the alignment.
How do you stand up to the ball?
Where do you put the ball in your stance?
How do you aim?
That all is part of alignment.
My feeling is that there's really no one right way to do it because you sometimes see people
who are very close to the target.
Sometimes you'll see folks who are very open to the target and sometimes you'll see folks
who are very square to the target.
But they already do probably the same thing though is that they have their feet and their
hips and their shoulders all aiming in the same direction.
So whether they're aiming a little bit to the right, which would be closed, it's more
than likely you'll see that the feet, the hips, and the shoulders are all aiming a little
bit to the right, all on the same line.
In the same way with the open stance and the same with the square stance.
So that's probably the biggest thing in alignment is to get your feet and your hips and shoulders
all going in the same direction.
If you get those angles crossed, it makes making a good swing very difficult.
Now the second thing which is even just as important, maybe more important, is where
do you put the ball in your swing?
It's very difficult sometimes to understand and figure out where does the ball go?
Very often I'll see players have the ball way too far forward, almost beyond their left
toe, which causes very much an upward motion of the swing through the ball.
And the adjustment for this would then be to slide way forward at impact trying to get
your club to the ball, both of which make for a bad golf swing.
And just as equally bad though would be putting the ball too far back.
If the ball gets too far back with the driver, now you're hitting with very much a descending
blow.
And the more descending the blow, the more backswing you put in the ball, the higher
it's going to go, the shorter it's going to go, and also the more crooked.
And so very often you'll see a player with the ball way back and then they hang back
trying to get the club on the ball.
Either way, forward or back, it's a bad swing.
So where does it go?
Well, think about it like this.
Making a golf swing is like making a big circle.
The swing is just one big circle.
At some point in the circle, the club's going to be going exactly parallel to the ground,
which I call the flat spot of the swing.
And that's where the driver should go when you try to hit a tee shot.
You find that spot in the swing that's flat where you're going parallel to the ground
and then the ball goes right there.
For me, it happens to be right off my left heel.
I feel like as I make a swing, at that point in my swing, the club is moving exactly parallel
to the ground, the flat spot, and that's where it goes.
And I put it there every time.
So with alignment, get the feet, the hips, and the shoulders all squared with each other,
going the same direction, and put the ball on the flat spot of your swing.
No matter what your handicap, better scores are always the ultimate goal.
And while it's great to hit the long ball, you know, to boom it all the way out there,
sometimes hitting the straight ball will benefit you even more.
Webster's Dictionary defines accuracy as free from error, exact, precise.
And when it comes to navigating a golf ball off a tee, over 200-plus yards into a narrow
fairway lined with four-inch rough, accuracy takes on a whole new meaning.
Now here on tour, everything's all about accuracy.
You can't forsake accuracy for distance.
Driving accuracy is an important stat.
Probably driving distance is a very overrated stat.
If you're going to be short, you're going to have to be accurate.
On tour, Fred Funk has been a perennial leader in driving accuracy.
Although he gives up some distance, Funk puts a premium on finding the fairway.
With the rough that they try to get for us to play in out here, you want to be in the
fairway no matter what.
Unfortunately for me, a lot of times when I miss a fairway, I'm just barely off, and
that's where the thickest part is.
So it's better for me to be back there hitting 160 yards and 130 yards in the rough.
You can definitely control the ball a lot more off the short stuff.
So control off the tee leads to control from the fairway, but does that lead to victories?
For Joe Durant, it did.
In 2001, Durant experienced the best season of his career and coincidentally led the tour
in driving accuracy.
With two victories, Durant earned over $2 million.
So accuracy off the tee and winning must go hand in hand, right?
Not so fast.
In 2000, Tiger Woods set the golf world on fire and rewrote the record books.
Nine victories and over $9 million in earnings.
But believe it or not, Tiger only ranked 54th in driving accuracy.
He did, however, finish atop the total driving category, which is computed by totaling a
player's rank in both driving distance and driving accuracy.
So what's more important, distance or accuracy?
We're not sure, but we do know this.
Not everyone can hit the long ball, but anyone can hit it straight.
Let me ask you a question.
What's more important, to hit it long or to hit it straight?
In 2001, Joe Durant hit over 81% of the fairways leading on the tour and he won twice.
Tiger Woods hit it a lot further and pretty straight too and he won five times.
So what's the answer?
Well, they're both important.
Distance and accuracy both are extremely important.
But you can kind of break them up because if I'm on the golf course and I'm just spraying
it all over the ranch, I can't keep it in the fairway at all, what do I do to get the
ball going straight?
There's a few things that are very important to me when it comes to accuracy.
The first one being my pre-shot routine.
It all starts before I even swing the club.
In order to have a good idea of the kind of shot you want to hit, you have to really visualize
what you're trying to achieve.
Before any shot I hit, I walk behind the ball and I visualize the shot I'm trying to hit.
Especially if I'm hitting it poorly, if I'm hitting it all over the map, even more importantly
I have to visualize it.
So I picture the exact shot, where I want it to start, where I want it to finish, how
it's going to fly, how it's going to roll.
I visualize the entire shot just so that I can get a clear picture in my mind of how
I want that ball to go.
When I can visualize the shot, then I can feel the swing.
So part of my pre-shot routine is visualizing the shot and then taking the same amount of
time, the same number of waggles, the same amount of everything, every time so that I'm
very consistent in what I do.
So number one, a consistent pre-shot routine, which means good visualization and a very,
very consistent way of doing things.
The second thing about getting it straight for me would be to really have good tempo.
And tempo really is two things.
It's the speed of the swing and it's balance.
Very often I'll find that if I'm hitting it poorly, hitting it crooked, that I'm swinging
too fast or too slow and my balance is all over the place.
Maybe I'm falling back on my right foot or sliding too far forward, but my balance and
my speed are off.
And so I try to get the tempo, the speed of my swing and my balance flowing, nice and
smooth, nice and slow.
There's no big hiccups in the swing.
It doesn't speed up.
It doesn't slow down.
It just flows.
So very much a flowing swing.
And I like to visualize Ernie Els.
This is someone that I really enjoy watching swing.
So if my balance is off, my tempo is off, I start thinking of Ernie.
Tempo.
As Tom talked about, it is incredibly important to have good tempo when you play this game
if you're going to play consistently.
Tempo is the glue that holds all the pieces together.
Important to realize in golf, golf is a game of motion, not positions.
Tempo helps you with the motion.
I've got four drills for you here that I think done on a regular basis will improve your
tempo.
The first one is called the machine gun drill.
And I've lined up six, seven, eight, nine balls in a row.
What I'm going to do to keep a constant rate of acceleration, to keep a constant tempo,
a constant beat to the swing, is I'm going to swing back and forth and hit each one of
these balls without stopping.
So I'll start with the first one.
You want to make sure if you do this on the driving range, there's no one too nearby because
the first few times you do this, this is a little tricky.
And by the time you get to about ball number five when you're doing this, you get some
feel of a constant beat, constant tempo as you go through the swing.
And then by the time you get to the last ball, that gives you some idea of the rate at which
you should swing.
Very sort of even paced.
We call that drill the machine gun drill.
You don't need to do it with a driver like I did.
You can start with a seven iron.
You can start with four balls off a tee.
But it really helps put the tempo in there.
Now the second tempo drill I'd like you to consider is swinging on one leg.
I'd like to show you that.
Now swinging on one leg stops you thrashing at it or hitting too hard with your hands.
If you hit too hard with your hands, you'll probably lose your balance.
So great for tempo.
Stand on one leg, smooth swing.
I should play like that.
That's great for giving you that constant rate of acceleration.
Effort is the big killer.
Effort ruins tempo.
So what we'll do here is I'm going to have you whistle.
I want a monotone whistle through the whole swing.
Something like this should stay as one tone.
Now if you're exerting too much effort from the top, you'll have a little warble there.
So ideally, if I can do it, ideally here's what we'd have.
There'd be very little change if any in that tone.
A third tip that I have to make sure you hit it straight, to be very accurate, is what
I call stay level.
You could say it also means don't tilt your spine.
So staying level to me means that my spine stays pretty much straight up and down throughout
my swing.
It doesn't tilt this way, it doesn't tilt that way.
When my spine tilts, then I'm not level anymore.
Very often what I'll see is I'll see a player or I'll find myself, if I'm hitting a crooked,
tilting.
I'll take it back, maybe I'll tilt this way on the down swing and then tilt back this
way on the through swing.
Either way, my spine's tilting and I'm not level at all.
So I want to stay level, which means keep the spine steady.
As I hit the club back, my spine is straight up and down.
I turn around my spine and the same thing through the ball.
The spine stays straight up and down.
It stays, the shoulders stay level and I'm level through the ball.
So if I can keep my spine level, then I've really accomplished something.
So if I have a good pre-shot routine, if I have good tempo, keep my spine level.
Come three quarters of the way home to having really the four things that can really help
you hit it straight.
The fourth one, and maybe the most important, is making sure that you face the target at
your finish.
Imagine a pitcher, bomb of the ninths, got to throw a strike.
He turns, he steps, he throws, and he throws this way with his stomach still towards third
base.
You've never seen that.
It's always step, turn, throw.
Same thing with golf.
As you come through the ball, your stomach needs to turn and face the target.
So if I really want to think about hitting it straight, I'll make sure that my bell
buckle, my belly button, whatever, is facing the target completely at the end of my swing.
I'm not facing right field, I'm not facing left field, I'm facing right at the target.
So again, those four things are very important.
If you're hitting it sideways, have a good pre-shot routine.
Number two, have good tempo, good balance, good timing.
Number three, stay level, don't tilt your spine at all.
And the fourth thing is face the target once you finish your swing.
Face the target, watch the ball fly straight down the fairway.
You know, as PGA Tour Partners Club members, you're obviously aware of the trend in golf.
Power is definitely where it's at.
What with the advance of equipment compounded with the new emphasis on golfers as athletes,
the game of golf has been transformed into a game of power.
In a sport where touch and finesse has always been the focus, a revolution of sorts has
occurred.
The game is changing.
Distance off the tee has evolved into a whole new ball game.
Power has stepped to center stage, and everyone wants in on the act.
Let it rip.
Let it rip.
Let it rip.
Go ahead and let it rip.
For whatever reason, the boys on tour are booming it longer than ever, and it's not
just the big boys.
These days it seems everyone on the PGA Tour is taking it deep.
They don't even look like they hit it really hard.
It just goes.
They've got that little thing, you know?
John Daly's got that thing, and he's had it for a while.
But his driving distance average from 91 wouldn't even make the top 10 these days.
Back in 96, Daly's average was nearly the same while the rest of the tour began closing
the gap.
But since then, the guys at the top have picked up nearly 14 yards.
So what could possibly account for such an increase?
Technology.
Technology.
Technology.
Technology.
Technology.
Technology.
The golf ball technology has increased tenfold over the last 10 years.
The technology has helped players tremendously.
People are hitting it longer, and I think it's not so much the golf ball personally
as I think the golf clubs.
I think the balls are much better.
They go too far.
We're making clubs that have all this effect.
No one's stopping anyone.
Players are understanding how the golf ball works and how the clubs work to make the ball
fly where they want it to.
I think guys play a lot more aggressively now than they ever used to play because technology
allows them to play that way.
You can use my driving stat to show that it has changed because I probably drive a little
farther than I did as far as stat-wise, yardage-wise.
Being able to match up people with their swing speed, with their launch angle, what shaft,
what weight in the club, the length of the clubs, all these things combined with the
golf ball have definitely helped the golf ball go further.
I think because the technology's improved, guys are becoming more aggressive knowing
that the golf ball will hold up in the wind.
And when you do that, you can fire pins that you shouldn't be firing at.
You've got a lot of guys who are extremely physically strong for golf.
You can really build your body for golf.
So that's making a major impact with guys who are hitting these 280 and up 300, 320-yard
drives.
I know I get longer every year and all I do is gain weight, so it doesn't have anything
to do with working out.
It's got to be the technology.
Whether it's technology or physiology, there's no denying the place of power in today's
game of golf.
And if you're still not convinced, just ask Bob Estes.
Estes finished first on the leaderboard at the 2002 Kemper Open, but tied for 23rd in
driving distance.
That was because he only averaged 294 and a half yards off the tee.
Every year, players hit the ball further and further.
There's really three simple things that you can do to increase your distance.
Well, there's a few things that I really try to do.
If I really want to hit the ball far, if I'm trying to increase my yardage, I do it by
being logical about it.
What exactly makes a ball go farther?
Well, in essence, you have to increase your club head speed.
The faster the club head's going at impact, the farther the ball's going to go.
And so how do you do that?
Well, it only makes sense to me that for starters is that you need to increase the size of your
arc.
If you have an arc that's real small, real shallow this way, the club head doesn't move
very far, so it's not going to have a lot of speed.
So the bigger your arc becomes, the more you can move the club away from you, creating
a big, big, big circle.
The farther the club has to travel, the more speed it can get.
And so for starters, think about Davis Love.
Make a really big arc.
Get that club going way back.
Make a huge arc.
Make a huge circle.
And you'll realize you're going to gain some club head speed.
The second thing would be to make sure you swing from the ground up.
It really doesn't do you any good to make a big arc, to make a big swing.
Get the club way back and way wound up if your first move is leaning with your left
shoulder, which is a very, very common mistake.
If you do that, if the left shoulder moves first, then the club gets steep and you actually
release the club up here and you'll lose club head speed.
And so you need to start your swing, your downswing from the ground up.
Once I get the club to the top of my backswing with a big, big arc, the first move is with
my left knee, my left hip, everything from my feet, my knees, my hips goes first this
way.
Never with the shoulders first.
So you got to start your downswing from the ground up, not from the top down.
Another drill was inspired by the greatest of them all, almost, Bobby Jones, when he
said you should feel when you play golf as if you were swinging a rock on a string.
Well, I haven't got a rock, but I've got a rope.
And if you go down to the hardware store and get a piece of rope about 30 inches long,
35 inches long, and you practice swinging that rope back and forth, you very quickly
get the feel of how the swing starts from the ground up.
You've heard Tom mention that, how the tip of the rope or the club head is the last thing
to come through, and how the belt buckle, of course, faces the target.
And you can see very clearly with the rope, the rate at which you unwind will influence
the speed at which the rope goes.
I've had a lot of really good players tell me when they play their best, they feel as
if they're swinging a rope.
Worth trying at home, it'll help your game.
The third thing would be make sure you swing within yourself.
I can't stress that enough.
If I really have to hit one, if I really got to just nail it, it's very, very, very typical
that I'll start just squeezing the club head so tight.
I'm just going to just rip that ball and the veins of my arm start popping out and the
veins of my neck start bulging.
I'm just trying so hard.
I want to hit a ball so hard.
Well, it's just the opposite.
You need to relax.
You need to be smooth.
In fact, I even try to lighten my grip some.
Because very typically, if I really want to hit a hard, I'll hit it to the right, and
the big part is because my grip has gotten too tight.
So I relax my grip.
I'll let my arms be nice and loose, try to feel like my muscles are very relaxed, have
a good posture, and just be very, very, very, very loose with the ball, and then swing within
myself.
I still swing very hard, but I swing within myself.
So those three things you have to always do.
You need to take a big arc.
You need to always swing within yourself.
And most importantly, start the downswing from the ground up and not the top down.
The final piece of the puzzle, hit that ball long and straight, has nothing to do with
your actual swing, but everything to do with what's between your ears.
The mental side of golf is maybe the most important part of golf.
And what do I do on the golf course?
When I get my driver in my hand, any club for that matter, what do I think about in
order to give myself the best chance to be successful with each shot?
Probably the first thing is to have a consistent swing, a consistent swing thought, doing the
same thing every time.
What I'm talking about is this, is that it would make no sense at all for me if the swing
thought that works for me is, for example, swing slow, to start thinking about keeping
my left arm straight.
That would be working against myself, a new thought that I never think about.
And what I'm trying to do is simplify it so that just very simple little things can kind
of spur me on to making good golf swings.
And so I want to have a consistency in what I think about, consistency in my keys, and
then consistency in the way I play the game.
I want to try to do the same thing every time.
My swing works.
I know that.
And so it's foolish for me to try to change my swing in the middle of a round.
And so if I have a consistency in the way I think about it and consistency in the way
I swing the club, I'm going to be successful in my round of golf.
The second thing is to stick with what works best for you.
Don't try to be a hero if you can't pull it off.
Don't try to do something that you're not capable of doing.
Find what you do well and perfect it.
That was something that David Cook, a sports psychologist, said to me a few years ago.
He said, Tom, if you want to be really good, find what you do well and perfect it.
And so that's what I want to do.
I want to stick with what works best for me, work on that, and perfect it.
For me, it happens to be a draw.
And I've gotten to the point now where my draw is just a little baby draw, but it draws
almost every time.
And so when I get under the gun, I know which way it's going to go.
So mentally, you want to keep it very simple.
You want to keep it very consistent.
You want to do what works for you and just perfect what works best for you.
Driving is fun.
I love getting on the tee, taking the driver, taking a big, healthy cut and just ripping
it and watching it fly out of sight.
That's a lot of fun.
So we just kind of followed a few tips on this whole video.
There's a few things we talked about.
There's fundamentals.
There's tempo.
There's visualizing.
There's all kinds of different things we talked about.
But in the end, you just got to clear your mind, tickle the club.
And in the words of John Daly, you got to grip it and rip it.
Have fun.
Well that wraps up this edition of the PGA Tour Partners Club Game Improvement Video
Series.
But I've got an idea for you.
Now that you're armed with all the knowledge and information to improve both your driving
distance and your accuracy, hey, come on out here in the golf course and give things a
try because that very next swing that you make might be just the perfect one that produces
that 300 plus yard drive right out there in the middle of the fairway.
As always, we'd like to thank PGA Tour Partners Club President Tom Lehman for his very valuable
insights.
And we'd also like to thank our swing guru, Martin Hall, for his tips and drills to help
you.
But most of all, we'd like to thank you, the members of the PGA Tour Partners Club,
for joining us.
I'm Jim Kelly inviting you to keep this tape nearby.
Maybe put it right by your driver and pull both up the next time you're having trouble
with either distance or accuracy.
Listen up!