Men complain about this more than women complain about their hair.
You will find a lot of redundant themes on this blog and there is a reason. Most people make the same 3 or 4 mistakes with their golf game and those three or four mistakes lead to 10-12 different problems each…which is why we all stink at golf.
The “why can’t I ******* hit driver” crowd is usually limited to double digit handicaps, which is about 95% of golfers.
People say “you try and hit it too hard, just swing easy” and “your swing is too fast,” etc. Like most advice from fellow ducks, it is wrong.
Problem #1 has already been discussed. You see that giant headed monster of a driver and think there is no way that gets up in the air, so you drop your right shoulder and try and help it up in the air. The shoulders stop rotating and that makes it almost impossible to hit it straight.
Problem #2 is people have drivers with not enough loft and/or a shaft that is too stiff. Most manufacturers don’t have accurate lofts on their clubs, it’s almost always less. Not enough loft or too stiff of a shaft will make problem #1 even worse.
Most people hit their 3-wood farther off the tee than driver because it reduces problem #1, so that is one possible solution.
Here are two things that will help if you insist on hitting driver.
First, when you go pick out a driver, don’t bother to look at what loft is printed on the club. Find one that you can setup to and you can see a lot of the clubface. If you can see the clubface, that means the club has a good bit of loft. Also, get a weaker shaft than you think you need. If you think you need a stiff, get a regular and so on.
The next thing is use some drill on the driving range that gets you to not hit up on the ball. All other clubs you hit down on the ball. Driver you are supposed to hit on an even path with the ground, but not up on it.
Practice hitting down on driver on the range by teeing it lower, or even hitting it off of the ground. The object of this drill is not to hit good shots, it’s to retrain your brain not to hit up on it. Keep your shoulders rotating during this drill and you will find that when you tee it up normal height on the golf course, you will see steady improvement.
That is what golf is about. Steady improvement. There are no miracle cures and improvement is slow over weeks or even months.
It takes Tiger Woods 18 months to rebuild his swing by practicing 8-10 hours a day, so how can we expect our improvements to be quick?
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I once played with Parker McLachlin when he was still at UCLA at Industry Hills one day and he wasn’t hitting the driver. I asked him why and he said he couldn’t hit it. Here’s a guy, an All American, who can’t hit a driver.
Of course, on long holes on the tee he’d throw a ball on the ground and hit down on a 3 wood and hit it 300 yards straight down the middle.
Finally toward the end of the round I coaxed him into hitting the driver. He snapped hooked it OB and turned to me and said, ‘See?”
Now he’s on the PGA Tour doing fine, but it shows you how difficult the traditional golf swing really is.