Got a tip from a long drive pro yesterday

[Toby]

Focus on just one thing for power

Yesterday I was fortunate to have some instruction from Marcus edblad, a great lefty who's the longest long driver in Europe right now. He started playing golf six years ago and equipped with 80% fast muscles he's the longest lefty in the world.

Anyway, to cut it short, his approach to gaining ball speed was simple and straight forward. Grip is loose so that you really feel the weight of the club head and think of the release as tossing a ball with speed coming from a late and fast rotation of the wrists. The thought should be similar to fishing where the focus is not on the rod but the weight of the lure, if you catch my drift.

I started gripping much easier than usual and immediatley got a better feel for the head and the rotation. Drives were marginally longer, but that probably had a lot to do with poor launch angle, excessive spin and tiredness as I hitted more and more balls. But the best improvement was in accuracy as the ball went much straighter as I didn't try to direct it with force.

Marcus showed me his practice club: a 460 cc Alpha head filled with concrete and shafted with a reinforcement bar! Absolutely unbelievable. He uses it to strengthen his wrists. I could hardly pick it up from the floor...

At the start of the session, Marcus showed us a short club (no more than 2 feet long) and promised a 3 pack of ProV1 for anyone that could outdrive him during the session. He knocked it 255 metres (280 yds) and then hit his driver about 330 metres (365) all carry.

I was 8 metres shy of the 255-target with my best poke, but still quite pleased. Overall, great fun and useful tips that I thought I pass along for anyone who want to improve their driving length AND accuracy.

Now, I'm gonna start working on wrist strength!

Sorry for the long rant.

/Toby

[MBuckler]

sounds like a great tip to me.

some of those long drive guys are just beefy though. :)