Almost every bit of advertisement these days, whether it is about golf balls, clubs or accessories, entices the golfer by offering greater distance of some sort or another. “Using our driver will give you more distance off the tee” or “try our new xxx golf ball for greater distance,” they exclaim! In the meantime they try to convince you that “distance” is really number one. Golf distance has been so ingrained into our psyche that we even make sure we inquire about distance when buying just about any new golf item.

Playing good golf is more about accuracy than about distance. Granted, hitting a 275 yard drive off the tee is a great fun but if it isn’t accurate and on the fairway, it won’t do much to help your score. What good does it do to hit a Pitching Wedge 140 yards if it is not hit accurately? Distance is important but I’ll take accuracy over distance any day. To prove my point just look at the L.P.G.A. Tour. There is no way that these excellent women golfers can hit the ball as far as most male PGA Tour Players, yet, their scores are very commensurate with men. Yes the courses they play are, for the most part shorter but this proves my point, which is that golf distance is not as important as golf accuracy.

I think every golfer needs to step back and ask themselves just how important golf distance really is to their game. Which is more worthwhile a 275 yard drive that lands in deep rough or a 240 yard drive that lands in the center of the fairway? In my view, striving for greater distance is the single biggest contributor to poor scores. Rather than swinging “within themselves,” many golfers try to “kill” the ball. This is a chronic problem which is relatively easy to correct with the use of the proper mental discipline.

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The driver has the longest shaft of all the clubs, around 44 to 45 inches. It is the heaviest club used and it is designed to hit the ball farther than all the other clubs. These facts contribute to our strong desire to swing this club so much faster than all of the others. Let’s take the time and examine some common sense physics to the driver golf swing.

The only way for any golfer to truly know how far he or she hits each club is to swing exactly the same on every shot. That being the case, each club is different from the other in that there are different lofts, lengths and weights assigned to each of them. Why then, should a driver be swung any harder than any of the other clubs? Shouldn’t the design of the club determine the distance of the shot instead of how hard it is swung? The answer is a resounding yes! The driver golf swing, in reality, should not be different than any other club in the bag. Should you be able to “crank one” every so often whenever the need arises, you bet you should.

The driver golf swing should be fluid and consistent. Your tempo and timing should be no different than a Wedge shot. There should be no “strong-arming” or overuse of the hands and arms which is the natural tendency, especially with the driver. Try to remember that the farther away you are from a target the harder it is to hit it. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that. So, if you are trying to hit an area in the fairway that is 35 yards in width and 250 yards in distance it would seem that accuracy is much more important than distance. Use your normal swing with your driver and watch how much your game improves.

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