Golf Buzz Tip: How to Hit Longer, Straighter Drives

Are you completely and utterly satisfied with your driving consistency and distance? Yeah, we aren’t either. Check out Blair O’Neal, host of The Myrtle Beach Golf Buzz, as she discusses a few driving tips at the Legends Resort in Myrtle Beach.

Blair O’Neal: Hi. I’m Blair O’Neal host of The Myrtle Beach Golf Buzz presented by Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday. Today I’m here at Legends Resort and Golf with Matt Veltman, and he’s going to show us a driving tip.

Matt: What we’re going to talk about today, I find a lot of people, the amateur’s, we wanted to work on alignment, ball position, and just a little bit with the take away to try and get people to hit more fairways. When I have my students practice, a lot of times what I like them to do is go ahead and pick a target out in the background there, and what we got here is called an alignment stick. It’s something you can place down when you practice, and just go ahead and hit your shots off of it. And just explain to the viewers what it does for you.

Blair: OK. Yeah, when I practice, I always am using an alignment stick. When you’re practicing, obviously you want to have quality versus quantity. You want to play like you’re playing on the course. So you’re going to practice like you’re playing on the course. So you set down an alignment stick then it’s easier to wind up to your target and make sure you’re setup correctly.

Matt: 100 percent.

Blair: And your practicing quality practice versus just hitting and not knowing where the ball’s going and not having any goal in mind.

Matt: Good. So what we got is we got that chimney in the distance there. We’re lined up parallel, square to it.

Blair: Okay.

Matt: Just go ahead and hit a couple shots for us with your feet, hips, and shoulders all aligned to the target for us.

Blair: Okay, so I’m gonna set up to this ball. I’m going to set down my club head. I’m gonna make sure that my feet are squared up to this alignment stick, my shoulders, my hips. This way now I know I’m aimed correctly. I can feel confident with my shot. Take one last look at my target . . . [golf club hitting ball]

Matt: But what I see a lot of people doing when I play with them is they have the ball too far back in their stance which promotes a real decelling blow which isn’t really the best technique for hitting a driver. So what I like to either show them is just show them how in the driver we keep the ball towards the forward part of our stance so we can have a little bit shallower swing playing through the ball.

Blair: OK. So when I setup, I’m going to setup my club head. Get my stance. And the way I like to check it is to almost make sure that this ball is right inside your left foot. So it’s going to be the most forward in your stance with any club versus what we were talking about having the ball a little too far back or in the middle. You want to make sure with your driver the ball position is more forward.

Matt. That looks good there.

Blair: [golf club hitting ball] Thanks so much for the driving tips

Matt. I’m hoping we can hit a lot more fairways out there in the course.

Matt: Definitely. Thanks for coming out to see us.

Blair: Thank you. I’m Blair O’Neal with the Myrtle Beach Golf Buzz.