Deliberately slowing down swing speed with driver off the tee

[Wormkiller]

At my tight, narrow, tree lined home course there are players aged 60+ that make a mockery of younger, stronger and less experienced players (like me!). They dink their tee shots 150-170m down the middle, rinse and repeat for their shots off the fairway, and still hold handicaps under 15.

 

Yesterday I had a nightmare round where I couldnt hit a fairway to save my life. Even my 3 hybrid, which has been reliable lately giving me 180m or so to work with, was hooking left, leaving me in the trees with miles to go. Approach play with my irons and short game was relatively solid.

 

Dont know how many have seen OMP on the Golfmates youtube channel, but he kills it playing dink, dink golf with his “traffic light system”.

 

So Im just wondering if theres players out there who have had success in using the large face a driver offers and reducing their swing speeds to get the ball straight down the middle. My goal at the moment is just to consistently break 100, so Im not looking to set up short iron shots for GIR, I just want to play off the short stuff, because to me this is an enjoyable way to play the game, compared to landing one of two smashed drives a round and hitting out of sticks and sand in the bushes half the time.

 

Thanks all.

[nitram]

Nothing wrong with a reduced speed driver when you absolutely have to hit the fairway, just like using an 8-iron for a 100 yard pin. Just make sure you practice it and are still accelerating through the ball.

[DaveGoodrich]

Yep, search "bunt driver" and you will find some posts on the topic. Choke up a little, think "good contact" not "speed."   A shortened back swing will naturally take some speed off, but as @nitram says, make sure you still accelerate through the ball and finish your swing.  There is a good chance that, if you can master this swing, you will be able to gradually add speed and eventually be able to keep your "full swing" driver in play too.   

[Hawkeye77]

17 hours ago, nitram said:

Nothing wrong with a reduced speed driver when you absolutely have to hit the fairway, just like using an 8-iron for a 100 yard pin. Just make sure you practice it and are still accelerating through the ball.

+100 - practice it!

[Pepperturbo]

Slowing your SS down is NOT detrimental to scoring, just can be detrimental to distance.  You might also find slowing down a bit gives you greater control of the club.  However, I wouldn't suggest you change your mechanics to play, as you say, Dink golf, like those ole guys.  They play Dink golf because they can't hit the ball hard or very far.

 

Slowing ones SS down doesn't necessarily correct swing flaws either, just shortens distance so less chance of the ball ending up deep in the junk.

 

I am 70yrs old and do not play Dink golf.  If I am playing a tight hole, I tee off with 2i or 3i, to insure 220-230yrds in the middle of the fairway.  Simply pull the club you can find the fairway with, and as your mechanics become grooved, pick the next longest club and so on, till your confident that Driver will be in the fairway.

[ferrispgm]

I do not advocate slowing your swing down with driver to hit the fairway....fix the swing flaw that's causing your misses and then you can swing away with driver.  Slowing the club down will lead to steering and worse shots. Until you make your swing better, use a shorter club that will help you hit the fairway. If that doesn't work then try to find a consistent shot you can play with driver....For me, if it's going poorly I'll play my driver off my front pinky toe and hit high 40 yard fades/slices until i'm done...it's not as good as normal but it's a shot I can play for on every hole and know it's not going left.  

[betarhoalphadelta]

2 hours ago, Pepperturbo said:

I am 70yrs old and do not play Dink golf.  If I am playing a tight hole, I tee off with 2i or 3i, to insure 220-230yrds in the middle of the fairway.  Simply pull the club you can find the fairway with, and as your mechanics become grooved, pick the next longest club and so on, till your confident that Driver will be in the fairway.

 

16 minutes ago, ferrispgm said:

I do not advocate slowing your swing down with driver to hit the fairway....fix the swing flaw that's causing your misses and then you can swing away with driver.  Slowing the club down will lead to steering and worse shots. Until you make your swing better, use a shorter club that will help you hit the fairway. If that doesn't work then try to find a consistent shot you can play with driver....For me, if it's going poorly I'll play my driver off my front pinky toe and hit high 40 yard fades/slices until i'm done...it's not as good as normal but it's a shot I can play for on every hole and know it's not going left.  

 

I'm in the exact same boat as you. Plenty of distance, but not on speaking terms with my driver.

 

The above bolded is my philosophy. Maybe to reach a par 5 in regulation I need to hit 5i-5i-7i. That's probably more likely to get me a GIR than taking driver off the tree and potentially losing a ball and/or having to hack my way out of trees--or worse, topping it 50 yards to the ladies' tee.

 

Artificially reducing swing speed on your driver is fear. And fear will mess up your mental game and your swing faster than anything else. Take a club that you're comfortable with, and make your swing. Even if you're playing with the old guys and they're hitting 170m and you can reach that with your 6i, maybe pull your 6i out of the bag and be even with them in the fairway rather than 100m past them and searching for your ball in the woods.

[Pepperturbo]

3 minutes ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

 

 

I'm in the exact same boat as you. Plenty of distance, but not on speaking terms with my driver.

 

The above bolded is my philosophy. Maybe to reach a par 5 in regulation I need to hit 5i-5i-7i. That's probably more likely to get me a GIR than taking driver off the tree and potentially losing a ball and/or having to hack my way out of trees--or worse, topping it 50 yards to the ladies' tee.

 

Artificially reducing swing speed on your driver is fear. And fear will mess up your mental game and your swing faster than anything else. Take a club that you're comfortable with, and make your swing. Even if you're playing with the old guys and they're hitting 170m and you can reach that with your 6i, maybe pull your 6i out of the bag and be even with them in the fairway rather than 100m past them and searching for your ball in the woods.

I heard you till you brought in fear and the mental game.  My low index was 2, I am currently playing to a 4. Course management and philosophy are very different to me.  One is reading what's in front of me, taking in all the variables, and determining how I want to play the hole; the other is a general school of thought.  Most people that are MID-HIGH handicaps don't have a mental game, to speak of, nor have the patience and self-control needed to see the value in using 5i-5i-7i to get GIR par when they are not on speaking terms with driver.  Fact is driver might not be the prudent club from the tee to win the hole or par it.

 

The lack of self-control is why mid-high caps, even high single digit guys hit the driver all the time, maybe as hard as possible and wonder why they lost the ball or hole. 

[2bGood]

I use the bunt drive from time to time rather than pull a hybrid out. Just make sure you complete the swing. For me half and 3/4 swings are warm up drill so I am pretty comfortable with it. 

Edited April 9, 2021 by 2bGood

[betarhoalphadelta]

4 minutes ago, Pepperturbo said:

I heard you till you brought in fear and the mental game.  My low index was 2, I am currently playing to a 4. Course management and philosophy are very different to me.  One is reading what's in front of me, taking in all the variables, and determining how I want to play the hole; the other is a general school of thought.  Most people that are MID-HIGH handicaps don't have a mental game, to speak of, nor have the patience and self-control needed to see the value in using 5i-5i-7i to get GIR par when they are not on speaking terms with driver.  Fact is driver might not be the prudent club from the tee to win the hole or par it.

 

The lack of self-control is why mid-high caps, even high single digit guys hit the driver all the time, maybe as hard as possible and wonder why they lost the ball or hole. 

I think maybe I wasn't clear. I wasn't saying that someone should engage in course management out of fear. I was saying that if you're so scared of your driver that you're trying to take something off of it to find the fairway, you shouldn't even pull it out of your bag to start with. Because the fear of hitting your driver is going to make it hard to hit a good shot whether you're swinging for the fences or whether you're swinging "easy". 

 

I think for someone like you that's playing to a 4, you have some semblance of what's going to happen when you step up to the ball... So for you, course management is a question of risk mitigation. You know that as long as you don't put yourself in trouble, par is the expectation. Even if you miss GIR due to a longer approach by being conservative off the tee, but you're near the green, you can probably get up and down. 

 

Guys like me (playing to almost a 24) or to OP (looking to consistently break 100)--it's a freakin' guess! So for guys like us, it's not risk mitigation, it's catastrophe avoidance! My likelihood of avoiding catastrophe is much higher with 5i off the tee than driver, so I don't really hit my driver--even on somewhat open holes. It's not course-management, it's me-management.

 

I brought up that 5i-5i-7i example specifically because I had a par 5 on the first hole of a course. Due to rains their range was closed so I had no warm-up. My goal was to take 5i off the tee, and then put another 5i down in the general direction of the hole, and then see what I could do from there. On the tee, I was *terrified*. I was playing with two buddies, but we had a single that joined us to complete the foursome. There was another group waiting to tee behind us, and then there was the starter. All I could tell myself was "don't $&#^ this up", but I have confidence in my 5i--I use it off the tee often. I smacked that 5i right down the middle, about 200-205 yards. Great start, right? No, I s#*%@$^d the next shot 100 yards into the right rough, and then was playing clean-up the rest of the hole lol... But at least I didn't embarrass myself on the first tee, which I very well might have done with driver!

 

That's why I'm saying to pick a club he trusts. Not because it's course management, but because if you step onto the tee box with confidence in the shot it's WAY better than trying to pussyfoot around a club you don't trust.

[Hawkeye77]

18 minutes ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

I think maybe I wasn't clear. I wasn't saying that someone should engage in course management out of fear. I was saying that if you're so scared of your driver that you're trying to take something off of it to find the fairway, you shouldn't even pull it out of your bag to start with. Because the fear of hitting your driver is going to make it hard to hit a good shot whether you're swinging for the fences or whether you're swinging "easy". 

 

I think for someone like you that's playing to a 4, you have some semblance of what's going to happen when you step up to the ball... So for you, course management is a question of risk mitigation. You know that as long as you don't put yourself in trouble, par is the expectation. Even if you miss GIR due to a longer approach by being conservative off the tee, but you're near the green, you can probably get up and down. 

 

Guys like me (playing to almost a 24) or to OP (looking to consistently break 100)--it's a freakin' guess! So for guys like us, it's not risk mitigation, it's catastrophe avoidance! My likelihood of avoiding catastrophe is much higher with 5i off the tee than driver, so I don't really hit my driver--even on somewhat open holes. It's not course-management, it's me-management.

 

I brought up that 5i-5i-7i example specifically because I had a par 5 on the first hole of a course. Due to rains their range was closed so I had no warm-up. My goal was to take 5i off the tee, and then put another 5i down in the general direction of the hole, and then see what I could do from there. On the tee, I was *terrified*. I was playing with two buddies, but we had a single that joined us to complete the foursome. There was another group waiting to tee behind us, and then there was the starter. All I could tell myself was "don't $&#^ this up", but I have confidence in my 5i--I use it off the tee often. I smacked that 5i right down the middle, about 200-205 yards. Great start, right? No, I s#*%@$^d the next shot 100 yards into the right rough, and then was playing clean-up the rest of the hole lol... But at least I didn't embarrass myself on the first tee, which I very well might have done with driver!

 

That's why I'm saying to pick a club he trusts. Not because it's course management, but because if you step onto the tee box with confidence in the shot it's WAY better than trying to pussyfoot around a club you don't trust.

You don't have to be scared of your driver to play a different shot with your driver that gives you a better chance on the hole, including finding the fairway.

[DaveGoodrich]

I don't advocate the swing thought: "slow down the swing." That does sound like fear.   I'm suggesting trying a shortened swing (I'm talking about a bit longer than a 9-3 swing) with the intent of making solid contact and starting the ball on line. 

 

Choking up a couple inches means you are hitting a 3 wood with a giant face, with lower spin so it doesn't curve as much, and at a lower trajectory so it stays on the course when you miss and rolls out when you don't. 

 

Shortening the driver swing isn't "fear" any more than being "afraid" to hit driver at all. Learn to hit driver by hitting driver.  

Edited April 9, 2021 by DaveGoodrich