Low Spin Driver

Reduce the spin on your driver for more distance

Hi, Robin here, with a quick tip for anybody who’s struggling, hitting their driver too high. You feel like your launch angle is high. Your golf ball seems to have a lot of backspin on it, so when it hits the fairway, you don’t get any forward momentum. The ball almost stops where it hits. Your playing partners seem to get more run, so you’re losing distance. Now, it’s quite a big subject, but I’m not going to go into too much detail, because I think there’s one conceptual fault I see a lot, which players need to understand first, before you can take that next step. Many players think to hit the ball lower that you’ll need to strike more down on the golf ball. It sort of makes sense, but in reality, it’s the opposite. When you strike down on the golf ball, you’ll tend to hit quite high on the club face. That’ll deflect the club face into a more lofted position. You’re striking down with a lot of loft. That’ll create a high, spinning ball flight.

I just said you need to do the opposite. Think about ping pong or tennis, where they actually strike up on the ball, with a de-lofted face that creates a flat ball flight. In their sports, that’s got top spin. We’re not quite as extreme as that in golf, but it’s the same concept. It creates a flat ball flight, and when it hits the ground, it runs. It jumps forward. The last thing you want to be doing is hitting the ball down low and trying to hit down on the golf ball. You need to learn to tee the ball up and swing up with a de-lofted face. If you’ve played other sports, if you’ve played tennis or ping pong, you might start to get the feeling for that quite quickly. If you haven’t, at least now you’ve got the right concept for you to take the next step in your lessons or you’re reading articles or looking at these kinds of tips. Let’s get the ball up. Tee the ball up. Swing up, trying to keep the loft of the club down. That’ll flatten out your ball flight.  It’ll take the spin off the ball, and you’ll start to see your ball jump forward and run when it hits the fairway.