Realistic expectations with a driver?

I'd like to know how you'd see this. What expectations can I have during my first year learning to shoot a driver? I have practiced with the driver since last July. At the driving range I shoot 100 balls with the driver a week on average. I remember the first months with the driver I sliced a lot, who hasn't. Then I took a lesson with a teacher who taught me how to get rid of the slice, which has always worked since, except when I forget to move the arms properly. After six months I think I know all the theory about the swing and usually know what mistake I made if  I pull, push or slice. I don't hook the driver. Now I am at a stage when I am not sure what to do next or what to expect. The contact with the ball is almost never clean. That's one concern. The second and more serious thing is I cannot seem to be able to drive further than 170 yards carry. I am 47 years old, but pretty flexible for my age. But the swing I know is too slow, about 70 mph and I don't know what realistic expectations I can have during the first year with the driver. Seems like I it's time I made the swing faster now, or should I rather tune the swing and focus on its quality regardless of speed? Thank you, I am being a bit impatient probably.

The way to reach your potential for power, and you are still young in terms of "golfing years" , is to work on refining your swing.  If you can afford lessons that would be the best.  You could start a swing thread on the site here and we can help you a little bit as well.   Making your swing better will make it faster.  There is no quality of swing/vs speed argument really.  If your swing improves generally your speed improves along with accuracy.  Especially considering you are starting around 70mph.  So basically don't worry about the speed for now. Do you plan to take any lessons this year?  Also if I have not said it before, welcome to the site!

Thank you, cifer. I am actually not sure how much a teacher can help at this stage. For sure, he or she can point out the basic mistakes of a beginner. So my teacher showed me a few basic things - stay behind the ball during impact, roll the arms after impact to straighten the shot - when he was standing next to me, I could shoot one straight ball after another. So he saw his tips worked for me. Last time he saw me at the range he was OK with my swing, said nothing much to make it better. So I told him I was too slow and he said just swing faster. I tried but it had little effect. 'So he seems to give simple basic tips without analyzing details much.  I dont want to criticice him, he gave me the basic info I can work on and improve, but can we expect teachers to tell beginners what exactly they did wrong and how to improve substantially - for example in my case make clean contact and add 50 or 70 yards? Plus I see a huge difference between my driver practice swing when I feel natural and confident, and swinging at the ball when my head takes over and makes everything complicated. So I thought maybe I should spend a few months trying to bring smoothness and cool head to my swing and then I can ask the teacher to give me further instructions. Basically figure out the mental problem first, sort out the basic mistakes you know you make from time to time and then address the teacher again.

I started at 46 years old, so we're in the same boat.   I started with a dramatically shortened (cut about 3" off it) cheap ebay driver which helped me make solid contact.    Once I got good with that, I bought another cheap driver, shorted about an inch and a half, and then worked my way into a full size driver after that.    You could always choke up, but that feels funny & never appealed to me.

This approach just made sense to me.    The driver is the toughest club in the bag to hit because of its length.     Buy a cheapie on eBay, learn to shorten & regrip it, and practice swinging in good tempo (NOT FAST - force yourself to swing in more of a slow tempo for now - nothing good comes from beginners swinging out of control and too fast).    You'll be shocked how far you can hit it with a short driver when you hit it on the sweet spot in good tempo.

Take a systematic approach & over time, build up your speed once you can make consistent contact ... a fast swing with full length driver resulting in erratic contact is ... just ... bad.

PS - do some research on the Stack and Tilt swing ... helped me when I was learning.

Then you need a better pro, IMO.  "Swing faster" is not exactly advice.  It os like telling the student "Hi it farther."

Because trust me, if you are 6 months into the game (or 6 years or 16 years) there is lots and lots a good teacher can help you with at your stage.

All you are doing now is ingraining your mistakes and bad habits and making it harder for the next teacher to get you on track, IMO.

It takes technique. Learning how to hit your other clubs well will help. What I would do is get comfortable with the mechanics of the golf swing and hit a 3 wood or hybrid off the tee for now.

You don't have to have your shaft cut on your driver. Most drivers these days are adjustable. Most companies these days make sets woods in the same line. I have a Callaway driver, and their 3 wood shaft fits their driver plus it is 1-3/4" shorter! You haven't trashed your driver shaft either. You can buy a shaft from Callaway preowned if you have a Callaway driver. I would guess that other companies have preowned clubs as well. With your SS I'd get a Lite shaft for 60 - 75 mph SS.

But really, you need to focus on learning the swing mechanics. I hit a 3 wood off the tee for my first six months because I couldn't hit a driver as far. I hit my 3 wood 190 off the tee and hit my driver 160 off the tee and into the woods. Why would I use my driver?

It took me two years to hit a decent tee shot with a driver, and the thing is still unreliable.

I agree with this, not impressed with your pro @ryunin , based on what you are saying.  I would look for someone else.

Here are some threads that can also help you out.

http://thesandtrap.com/t/56069/good-golf-posture-how-to-address-the-golf-ball

http://thesandtrap.com/t/44307/hitting-up-or-down-with-the-driver-in-an-inline-pattern

http://thesandtrap.com/t/54540/a-centered-pivot

http://thesandtrap.com/t/77244/how-to-hit-a-driver-hit-it-further-and-stop-slicing

I would say that either you were maybe not understanding where the pro was headed with his advice or perhaps you had a lousy pro. Both totally possible. In either event, I think you're selling yourself short with where you can go from here. Anecdotally, I've seen a number of guys in their 40s and 50s who hit it a mile. 6 months in, you may not be realizing all of the different ways that you can be generating power in your swing. Thinking back to where I was when I started, I wasn't doing anything along the lines of what I do now, like transferring my weight forward, thrusting off of the ground, etc. And I was in so much better shape when I started (best of my life; there's been a direct correlation between stopping working out and starting golfing, but that's another story). I think you'll be amazed what good technique can draw out of you in terms of power-oriented results. And with driver in particular, technique is incredibly important: you can muscle the hell out of an 8 iron and get solid yardage even with a crap swing. With driver, you really need to have a solid swing, in my experience, before you see good distance. It's a very unforgiving club in my experience. Trying to "swing faster" has been counterproductive the times that I've tried it. What's gotten me result has been working on setting up with it farther up in my stance, being mindful of my shoulder and hip alignment, and strengthening my grip ("strong" in terms of alignment, not grip pressure). Those were identified by an instructor and confirmed in the @mvmac thread mentioned in another post above. I'd recommend using that thread as a jumping off point, but definitely look for some professional lessons. Try a different pro if you don't have faith in this guy! Getting lessons from someone is about trust and rapport as much as it is about the actual quality of the instruction, sort of like how you could have a driver well suited to you, but just not like how it looks or feels. Get comfortable with who you're taking lessons from and be able to buy into doing what they're telling you, even if it feels crazy or counterintuitive. There's great videos online of Mark Crossfield giving actual lessons to people (check him out on Youtube; awesome instruction) that might give you a better sense of what to expect or what to look for in a teacher. Good luck!

Yes, note that when I started I had a SS around 70 mph. with my driver. I'm now verified on a Launch Monitor at 90 mph. It's all technique. I'm not that strong.

My pro never told me to swing faster. He told me to swing better. We're working on driver.

If you don't have a good instructor available to you in your area, sign up for evolvr. Start a "My Swing" thread. Mike will chime in with some swing advice straight away.

Here's an old gem - and something that throws my timing off with this club - I keep engaging my right arm too soon:

Thank you, everyone, I gave you all thumbs up, it is all helpful, but as it is with forums, you always get plenty of tips and directions. I think, having read all these thoughts, that it is not such a bad concept to have a teacher who first tells the student about their basic mistakes. If these basic mistakes are solved, then why not proceed to a higher level and finetune some more. So what if he just gives me say three important things to keep in mind - not in mind when I swing, but you know what I mean - and it may take me a few months to get there and say, here, I can show you I got that sorted out, no slice, no pull, no push, so what's next? What I like about this teacher is that he just tells me the most important stuff. With irons, immediately he told me the huge mistakes I was making and withing a week or two he checked, and said, that's much better, now I still see you are using your arms too actively, but that was a huge progress for me. So I would not see his style that skeptically. If he "only" helped me to get rid of slice, push, pull and teach me to drive straight and on my part if I could learn to relax and enjoy that swing, I am sure, as people here affirm, the distance will come naturally. The OP was also about what kind of quality of driving can one expect after one year of weekly practice. I can imagine distance is typically longer than mine, but is it common that people learn to drive straight, or random unintentional fade or draw, simply put is it realistic to expect that 9 out of 10 drives will end on the fairway at 200 yards? I think realistically, I should be able to do this within two years if I continue like this. On a golf course at the stage where I am now, I'd say two out of three drives will be on the fairway, about 160 yards from the tee.

BTW I have a cleveland 588 custom driver and I just love it, I cannot help it. The teachers who tried it sait it was great for me and my present skills.

If you're getting 2/3 of your drives on the fairway you're doing better than me. I hit my driver about 216 yds carry before roll out, and I get about 3 fairways with it. I'm in the first cut another 3 times. A combination of behind a tree, chipping out to the fairway, out of bounds, in the water, lost the other 8 times I'd use it. I don't make very smart decisions on the course. If I was smart I'd hit my 5 wood and be in the fairway or first cut 10 times out of 12, but I'd be hitting a longer iron for my approach shot on those six holes. Sacrifices.

I think this is also about the funny advantage of making a slow, shorter swing with the driver, there is less room for going out of bounds or deep rough, bushes. I just try to hit simply and straight and it is quite a short drive, so. Also must depend on how difficult the golf course is, I usually play at easier courses where I feel comfortable.

I'd say don't get hung up on getting your driver to any particular distance with any particular accuracy, especially at these particular benchmarks (I think 200 is way more attainable than you may think). You'll notice in other threads that've been active in recent weeks that the two (distance and accuracy) tend to go hand in hand because they both come from technique. So you'll see the biggest hitters be the most accurate because they're getting that distance from sound fundamentals. I fixed my slice and that added distance to my driver, even over the occasional straight shot I had with my faulty swing. So it wasn't just a matter of taking the slicing shot and straightening it out and finding distance that way, it was finding distance by fixing my mechanics and improving my strike, which had the added benefit of being more accurate because it was a more repeatable, sound(er) swing. I'm glad you've had successes, and I hope you build on them! You'll find that things will click every once in a while and you'll make big jumps once different correct techniques make sense to your body. For me, for instance, learning what proper release meant and felt like was an eye-opening experience. It was very unintuitive, but it transformed my swing. And it was something that took forever to make sense: I had the lesson in February, but it didn't click for me on the range until one day in like April or May. My instructor demoed it and physically did the movement on me, but it didn't click until I was trying different feelings out on my own. I remember people staring at me because I was so proudly talking to myself on one end of the range, haha. So keep at it!

decent contact with all clubs is one of my main goals in golf, I just love the feeling when it cracks - it is like a different game altogether, the pleasure of the right contact, when it first happened when I was practicing hinge and hold, I was like - is that possible? that's much more fun that I thought, until then I was just trying to hit the balls somehow in the right direction, but with that first perfect contact I was in love with golf on a new level / there are so many pleasure moments in golf for me / the contact when it works out, the precision of the flight when it works out, the final put into the hole, the sunset, the birds singing... but the pure  contact is one of the best things about golf for me

If you feel like you have gotten a grip so to speak on the way the upper body works during the swing, and you like your accuracy and other flight characteristics as a real demonstration of what you are doing right, perhaps it is a good time to start thinking about hips and how all the stuff you have learned so far sits on top of them and how a 1 mph increase in hip speed then gets multiplied by the length of the 36" of arms and hands and the 45 inches of driver you are hanging off them. If you are moving in a circle, you might move across say 1ft in 1 second at the base of this 82" length, but obviously the tip of the shaft moves many feet in the same second. Its this multiply effect that you are looking for, and its your hips and larger muscles in your legs that are going to increase the speed of your upper body swing because the upper body sits upon the lower body almost like 2 separate engines. Somebody called my butt a power center one time. I thought to myself "brother you just dont know", but he was referring to my weakness of not sending my wallet rearward because of a bit of vertabrae damage I got playing high school football. Its a little hard to get it coordinated and timed out at first, but it will work out and you will have that swing that looks like you arent swinging hard but the ball flys a mile. You can actually ease off the upper body motions to increase accuracy by letting your lower body carry the swing. The big muscles are also harder to move off line, so it can be quite an accurate method. Do post some video. These swing gurus are really good here.

That it didn't click and then after some months it did click, I know that feeling, I like that about learning golf, too.