Can't Drive To Save My Life

[FortAsel]

Don't drive. Use your 4 iron. A buddy of mine started birdie birdie par teeing of with a 4 iron.

[Zeph]

The idea of using a wood or iron from time to time is good, but if you want to have the driver in your bag and use it, I would not suggest only using it when you have a monster hole. Like every other club, confidence is of greate importance. If you got a club you use so rarely you always feel uncertain, practice and play with that club. My home course is a very short 6 hole course with only two holes to use driver on. When I'm on other courses I use it as much as I can to get better and more confident with it. To get good with all clubs you need to practice and play with them. That's why you should use different clubs when practicing. Many love their 7 iron, but I suggest you practice with every club. Maybe using 9-7-5-3 one day and PW-8-6-4 the next. It's the same swing, so why should any club be different? Confidence has a lot to do with it.

If you don't want to drive, then put it out of your bag and replace it with a wedge, wood or hybrid. Only keep the clubs you feel confident with in the bag.

[picrig]

I think what Zeph said is true. On the other hand, I think far too many amateurs hit the driver way too much. Obviously pros have an advantage over us since they can hit a 3W close to 300 yards when necessary, but they don't use the driver nearly as much as I do. Tiger used it once in his British Open win a few years back (in 4 rounds!). I don't know numbers, but he didn't pull driver out too often in his two matches at WGC either. I think you need to be comfortable using your driver, but we also need to be smarter about when to use it.

For example, I recently started playing my home course from the tips instead of the middle tees (still not long--6430) and #10 is a 355 yard par 4. Pretty tight, w/scattered large trees and a huge downslope off the right side of the fairway. There's a little room on the left, but if you go more than about 10 yards left, you're in some brush and 3 ft. grass. Until recently, I would've teed off with my driver and tried to put it in wedge distance. Of course, I ended up in bad lies a lot. I've started teeing off w/my 3W instead, and although I end up ~140 most of the time (except for today w/a stupid 20 mph headwind), being in the fairway is nice.

[Yanks Fan]

Wow, I came back to some great info, thanks fellas.

It seems like beating the reverse pivot is a priority to cure this. I know I have a bad reverse pivot with my driver but not so bad of one with my irons, maybe I'm just fooling myself since I can hit irons pretty well. I know I don't have the best shoulder turn either with my driver. I swear my swing with my hybrids and irons are 1000x better and smoother than my driver. I'm going to the beach next week so hopefully I can figure it out and work on the suggestions given in this thread and finally be confident with my driver.

[Zeph]

It makes sense that you can hit your irons really well with that reverse pivot. It force you to decend into the ball. So any iron or hybrid will you be able to hit really well. Problem with the driver is it's much longer and harder to control, the shaft will flex more. When having a reverse pivot you come so much on top of the ball, with a driver it's very hard to get it anywhere. You'll need to hit it at the bottom of your swing or slightly on the way up or down. I prefer hitting it at the bottom or slightly up. You can practice this by moving your ball position around, maybe outside your left foot to get the feeling of swooping and catching it on the way up.

If you find that reverse pivot is your problem you should practice on correcting it (if you want) with every club, not just the driver. It'll probably take some time, but I believe you'll be a more consistent player if you manage it.
If your reverse pivot is smaller with the irons, changing your swing with the driver may not be that much work. Try taking a wide arc in your backswing, really getting over your right foot, weight shiftes and club is launched.

Charles Barkley is a good example of how a reverse pivot makes it very hard to hit a driver. It is of course exaggerated pretty much, his swing looks horrible, but still, I think it's a good description.
SPOILER! This will show how Barkleys swing turned out after the lessons with Haney, those of you who don't want to see it yet, only watch half the video or don't watch at all! His "after" swing is at 1 minute into the video, up til there is safe to watch.

Good luck.

[Damien45]

I have a lot of the same problems. I used to tee off with my 2i and get 220. I tried a 3w to get a little bit more distance, which I got, however the ball flight was a high arch. The landing was soft with out much roll. Great if I am teeing off on a short Par 4, long Par 3.

Since it is raining I have not been to the range much. Instead, what I do is swing a club inside. I don’t do a full swing or speed. What I am trying to do is “groove my path”. I am a bigger guy and one thing I have noticed is when I align my feet parrallel to the target I always get an outside-in swing path. No matter how slow I go to try to correct it. When my upper body comes around, it just pushes my arms out forcing me to pull them back in.

What I have done is started expeirementing with my foot placement. I discovered that if my left foot (I am right handed) is 2 or so inches forward (closed to the target line), my swing plane stays consistant AND my body rotation is a lot better on follow through. I can not wait to go to the driving range to test it out.

My question is if anyone else has the same problem? Have they tried the different alignment? What was the result? Any thoughts on the theory?

[Jon K]

It's probably your driver. I've got the same one and the same problem.

I cut it down a bit and I gained a lot more control and accuracy.

If you're length is stock and you're above 6ft, try trimmin it down or going with a different driver.

I'm no pro so I probably sound stupid right now ... however I was in the same situation and this helped me.

[Kcas77]

It's probably your driver. I've got the same one and the same problem.

This is not a stupid comment getting the shaft cut down on the driver is a great way to gain control. Taylormade also cheats its way into being one of the longer drivers because of the burner line they are atleast an inch over standard. If cutting the shaft down doesnt work I would try one of the square drivers especially the new nike.

[soloredd]

I haven't been able to hit my driver at all this year. I played Torrey Pines in December and had some decent drives with it but ever since then I have either had a bunch of tops off the tee or had a mental block. I started to use the 3 wood and got much more distance and straight hits. This past week I played 3 rounds and used my 3 hybrid off the tee for all of the par 4s and used the 3 wood for the par 5s. The driver just sits in the car. I really need to spend some extra time at the range with it.

I believe I know my problem but haven't had time to really find out. One of my playing partners said my feet at address when using driver was aiming to the right of the fairway. This allowed me good hits but of course, I wanted to correct what I thought was a flaw. Looking back, it wasn't a flaw at all and I simply changed to change. Dumb.

[Yanks Fan]

This past week I got the chance to play 72 holes in 5 days so I got some work with my driver. I shot some of the best golf of my life (40 on one nine) and worst golf of my life (52 on one nine). I worked on fixing the reverse pivot with my driver and irons and I'm hitting my driver better and my irons worse (go figure haha). But my driver is becoming much much more consistent (hell I even caught one perfect and knocked it out 250). I think trying to fix the reverse pivot with all my clubs caused the inconsistencies with my irons over the 72 holes so I'm not really concerned with that. That can be fixed with time. Right now, it looks like my driver is beginning to get better, thank god.

Right in time for spring haha. Thanks for everything fellas.