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Can Your Golf Swing Produce A 300 Yard Drive?
Understanding the true distance you hit the golf ball might be one of the top 5 factors in improving your golf swing. Most Golfers have no idea what distance they hit the golf ball and because of that ….. well, bad things happen.
I can’t tell you how many 90 and 100 Golfers I’ve met that believe they can hit the golf ball 270 to 300 yards. This may come as shock to you, but 270 to 300 yards is a long way! The average drive on the PGA Tour isn’t 300 yards.
Yet, there’s a group of Golfers – a massive group of 90 and 100 Shooters – that believe they can hit the ball 270 to 300 yards. Let me put it bluntly – No You Can’t! If some guys on the PGA Tour can’t hit it 300 yards – you can’t either.
Understanding the ‘true distance’ you hit the golf ball is more important than the ‘bragging distance’ you can hit it. Success on the golf course has more to do with knowing your distances so you can PLAN on the golf course rather than just relying on the distances that you think you can hit the golf ball. It’s about knowing what trouble on the golf course is within reach of your tee shot and which trouble is out of reach.
In addition to the total length you hit the golf ball – I find it possibly even more important to understand how far you carry the golf ball in the air. Because if there’s a fairway bunker at about 225 yards down the fairway and you hit the ball 250 total yards on your tee shot – odds are that you’ll land your golf ball in the bunker.
Or if you hit your tee shots 195 yards and there’s a fairway bunker about 190 yards away from the tee – same thing.
Though, what’s troubling is when a Golfer thinks they hit the golf ball 30, 40, 50 and in some cases 80 yards farther than they actually can. In this case – it’s impossible to PLAN correctly around the golf course.
So why are there so many Golfers that think they hit the golf ball farther than they can?
Take the story of Paul – On the 4th tee, a Par 5 that doglegs (curves) to the right – that’s listed as playing 530 yards from the white tees, Paul hits a pretty good drive down the right-side. Now, as Paul feels good about this ‘better than normal drive’ – he finds a sprinkler head within a few yards of his ball that says 230 yards to the center of the green. He then checks the scorecard to see that the white tees were listed at 530 yards.
"Oh yeah, I hit that drive 300 yards!!"
What Paul failed to notice was that the white tees were playing ‘a little up today’ - meaning that the greens crew moved the white tees from the normal position. So instead of a 530 yard hole – it was a 500 yard hole today. Which you might feel is an unusual occurrence, but I can tell you from working at golf courses for many years – this happens on a daily occurrence as Greenskeepers often find it necessary to ‘rest a tee box’.
Now, you may be saying – "oh, so Paul hit a 270 yard drive, that’s still a big drive." Well, maybe he didn’t even hit it 270 yards - Paul might’ve gotten a few more yards on a technicality because the hole doglegs to the right and hit his ball to the right. I say a technicality because the distances to the green from the sprinkler heads on the right-side of the hole are shorter to the green than the sprinkler heads in the middle of the fairway and the left side of the fairway.
For example – if Paul hit his drive the same exact distance, but it ended up on the left-side of the fairway, he might have a 280 yard shot to the green as opposed to the 230 yards to the green on the right side. Which, if all he did was subtract 280 yards from the 530 yards the white tees are listed at on the scorecard, he would have thought that he'd ‘only’ hit a 250 yard drive.
So even though Paul might’ve hit two drives the same exact distance – he would’ve miscalculated them as being different distances based on which side of the fairway his ball was on.
So in reality, the length of Paul’s better than normal drive was probably 250 yards or half of a football field shorter than his ‘300 yard drive’. And this doesn’t take in consideration if the hole is even slightly downhill, or the ground was a little harder because it hasn’t rained in a week, or if there was a slight breeze helping.
Which brings me to conclude based on my professional opinion that Paul’s best drives are possibly 240 yards, his average drive might be around 210 yards and his bad drives are around 180 yards.
Why is this important for Paul to know? Because now he can realistically PLAN around the golf course. Now he knows that his drives will end up between 180 and 240 yards away from the tee on 9 out of 10 tee shots. Now he can look-out at the golf course to see where the trouble is and PLAN whether that trouble is actually reachable or if he can realistically hit over the trouble. This will allow Paul to hit away from the trouble based on his yardages.
Because if Paul believed that he could hit the ball 300 yards ….. well, maybe that’s one reason why he’s been stuck in the mid 90’s to 100’s for 8 or more years. He probably hasn’t allowed himself to realistically PLAN his way around the golf course.
Do you truly know the yardages of your best, average and worst tee shots? Or do you only know the yardages of your ‘supposed’ best shots?
The Monkey hits one or two ‘supposed’ 300 yard drives and believes they should always hit drives over 280 yards
The Player doesn’t care about 300 yard drives as much as they care about knowing the distances of their best, average and worst drives
Go ahead, Be a Player!
Regards,
Marc Solomon - Your Instructor For Life
www.GolfMadeSimple.com
By the way – Golf Made Simple has just completed our first DVD. After years and years and offers upon offers from people that wanted to produce a DVD for us – we decided we wanted to do it our own way. We've created a DVD to help you become a Player, as opposed to all the other Monkey stuff that's already out there.
Our DVD - How To Improve Your Golf Swing Indoors – is improvement GMS Style. What's GMS Style? It's a Results Based Approach as opposed to a Theories and Assumptions Based Approach.
Click here to purchase our new DVD! or call us at 1 (888) 580 - 3635.
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"Your System Really Makes Golf Simple!"
First, I want to thank every one of the GMS staff that were involved in my GMS experience in Boca Raton in January.
Alex Ortega, who did a terrific job in understanding that I was going to take an international 10+ hours flight to attend Golf Made Simple, Alex Solomon, who efficiently put everything together in such a short notice, Paul Moore, the finest instructor I ever met and Hayden Lewis, who called me down here in Chile after I returned home just to follow up on my experience. What a great detail! It clearly shows how you guys are taking care of your business.
Marc, you know how these days all the marketing gurus state the importance of defining the mission and the vision of your company? Well, I believe that they forget about a third factor, much more critical and important: Passion. That's what you find at GMS - Passion for golf, Passion for teaching, Passion for keeping it simple and Passion for not forgetting that we - weekend golfers - are playing golf for fun.
First Act: Third day at Boca Raton, I just relied on my PLAN, used my TICK-TOCK in every shot and made sure to hit the golf ball first, then the ground. Right there, after only 3 days, on the most difficult golf course I've ever played, I shot a 42. An all time record for this ‘95 shooter’.
Second Act: Back in Chile, a 6900-yard course, with the fastest greens known to man. First time I'm going to play a full 18-hole round after attending GMS. A solid commitment to play to my strengths, plus TICK-TOCK every shot (yes, every one, including my putter) I shot 86. That's my best score ever, not only on that course, anywhere!
Third Act: Three days later, same course. I started using the GMS Warm-up PLAN at the range. I walked to the first tee with confidence. Bogey, par, bogey, par, par, par, bogey, (wait a minute, is this me? This can't be true, what's my score? WOW! I'm only 3 over after 7 holes!!!), then double bogey, double bogey for a 43 for the first nine - which is still my 3rd best 9 hole score ever!
I came to the realization that the Monkey way of thinking only leads to the Monkey way of playing. I walked to the Back Nine, aka as the Hard Nine, with only one thing on my mind. If I wanted to avoid those 2 last holes to happen again, I HAD to rely on my PLAN. Period. Not the score, not the results. 41 strokes later, I had shot 84 which is a new lifetime record, listen carefully, 11 strokes better than my best pre-GMS round.
Marc, I can't thank you enough for creating such an efficient way of teaching golf. I hate to sound as an infomercial, but your system really makes golf simple!
Count on one thing; I'll be back.
Regards,
Andrés Bowen - Santiago, Chile – Sent February 20th, 2008
Attended Boca Raton location on January 28th to 30th, 2008
Share Your Golf Made Simple Testimonials | Click Here
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GMS DVD On Amazon.com
The Buzz this week is that the GMS DVD – ‘How To Improve Your Golf Swing Indoors’ is now listed on Amazon.com. And interestingly enough, in the short one week span, it has become one of the most popular Golf DVD’s on Amazon.
So, to further solidify our spot on Amazon, I was wondering if you could give us a hand. Amazon has a feature that allows people to comment on products being sold on their website - even though, you don’t have to purchase directly from Amazon to comment.
If you have the GMS DVD, enjoy watching it, find it informative and helpful – could you follow this link to our product page on Amazon.com and write your comments so that others will have confidence in our product.
To write your review - Please Click Here
Thank you,
Alex – Director
Golf Made Simple Inc.
Toll Free - 1-888-580-3635
International – 001.904.460.8355
Email: Alex@GolfMadeSimple.com
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Tyrie J., Ronda and Dale R.
TAMPA, FL | February 1st to 3rd | 2008
Mon and Brenda N., Marsha and John M.
PHOENIX, AZ | February 18th to 20th | 2008
Paul C., Paul C. Jr., Eric M., Joe M.
BOCA RATON, FL | February 15th to 17th | 2008
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"Long Drives Plus Good Putting = 61"
We may sound like a broken record about the insignificance of hitting the fairway, but week after week, the best Players in the world are proving it. Again, there’s a big difference between being in the rough and being in the trees. And please, don’t give me the – "Well, the rough at my golf course is so thick that you need to be in the fairway." Because the rough at your golf course isn’t anywhere as thick as the rough on the PGA Tour.
This past week at the PGA Tournament in Mexico – Roland Thatcher shot an excellent 3rd round score of 61. This score consisted of what may be considered an almost perfect performance of 9 Birdies and 9 Pars.
Yet, in this 3rd round, Roland only hit the fairway 6 out of 14 times, though he hit the green in regulation 15 times. I guess being able to hit the ball with some good distance, averaging 329 yards off the tee, allows for some easier shots to the green – which allowed Roland to be close enough to the hole to need only 24 putts for his 61.
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"I wonder if the secret is that you need to get your shoulders turned 90 degrees as you swing back and have your hips turned 45 degrees? Or maybe it's that you need to lag the club on the way down so that you can snap your wrists at the very last second before you make impact? Or could it be that you have to make a well balanced follow-through?
Or maybe, just maybe - you could practice your putting for more than 7 minutes every 3 weeks and get your number of putts down from 41 to 32. Which isn't a huge deal since I'm not asking you to putt as well as a LPGA or PGA Tour Player.
If you score 95 now and you improve your putting from 41 putts to 32 putts - cha ching, cha ching - you're now an 86 shooter without trying any of those Monkey secrets I've listed above."
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