How Can You Improve Driver Accuracy? Fix Your Swing Path and Clubface Control

🏌️‍♂️ The driver is the longest club in the bag, making it harder to consistently hit the center of the face and causing more dispersion.

📏 Moving the ball forward in your stance and swinging up both shift your club path more to the left, which can worsen a slice.

👋 Grip position significantly influences the clubface orientation, directly affecting whether your ball curves left or right.

🔁 Instead of trying to hit perfectly straight drives, focus on creating a consistent ball curvature pattern that you can replicate and refine.

🔄 Most golfers slice because their swing path goes left while their clubface points right—reversing these tendencies can help control ball flight.

00:00:00 - Payton, have you ever not hit your driver straight? >> Um, all the time. >> Okay, cool. [laughter] Well, then this video is for you. We're going to talk about why you don't hit your driver very straight and some three of like the most common reasons as to why I see most golfers struggle. [music] So, this will be perfect for you. >> Perfect.

00:00:20 - >> So, Payton, one of the big reasons why people struggle with driver, the first one is because it's the longest club in your bag. Okay. Most standard drivers are like 45 and 3/4 in. Yours is just a little bit shorter cuz it's uh it's the women's version of it. But when you're playing a longer driver, okay, it's just harder to find the center of the face. The further away from the ball you are, more chaos that exists. So, if you haven't, the first step to fixing your

00:00:42 - driver dispersion problems would be go get fit. Okay. [music] Uh so then after that, let's talk a little bit about just why the ball tends to not go as straight with this club. So, as you move the ball forward in your stance, which is what most people should do with a driver, should tee it closer to your lead foot. [music] uh what happens with your three-dimensional club path is it actually shifts more to the left. [music] Okay? So, as that ball moves further and

00:01:04 - further forward on your arc, your path is going to go more and more to the left. And then the second piece to this is as you have the ball up on a tee, most people are going to tell you to hit up or swing up when you hit a driver. >> The more you swing up, that also shifts your path more to the left. [music] Okay? So, you basically have two things that are working against you, especially for someone like yourself who slices who already swings too many degrees to the

00:01:24 - left. This is a big reason as to why that ball continues to go to the left. So, not saying you shouldn't play the ball forward. I'm not saying you shouldn't try to hit up a degree or two, but just understand the more you do that, the harder it is to swing more out to the right, [music] which makes hitting a draw more difficult. Doesn't mean you can't do it. It just becomes a little harder. Okay. Um, so those would be the the big reasons just in setup. And then the other one that I see a lot

00:01:45 - with with golfers is just their the way they hold the club. Okay. [music] Obviously, if your grip is in the wrong spot, and we've talked about this in other videos, that's going to influence [music] where the face is pointed. And as your face to path relationship varies, just makes it harder to hit a driver straight. So, what we are going to do for you, I'm going to teach you a real basic way, fundamental here as to how to hit this ball to where it curves from right to left. Okay? And that's all

00:02:05 - we're going to worry about for now, and then you can practice this and start working on trying to hit it further and straighter. [music] Okay? So, for for those of you out there who haven't watched our other grip videos, go ahead and tune into those. Payton, what I want you to do is basically put your hands on the club [music] where your hands are rotated a little bit more away from the target than you normally would. Okay? So, your left hand for you will be more

00:02:23 - on top, your right hand will be more underneath. [music] Go ahead and then take your address position with this driver. So, what I see with most people where they struggle is they have this golf ball well outside their lead foot. Okay. For you, I want it just basically in line with the big toe on your left foot. Okay. Um, so even move a little bit more towards the target for me. There you go. Yep. Perfect. So, your armpit would be a good indicator of like where you'd want to have that um just

00:02:47 - inside your lead foot. All right. And then the last thing we're going to talk about is just the direction you're swinging. Okay. So, your hands are on there the right way. Your ball position is really good. As you swing through, this club's going to travel a little bit more out to the right. So, I'm going to go grab a handy dandy noodle. I'm going to throw it on the ground. And then you're going to make a swing and let's see if we can get that ball to curve from right to left. [music]

00:03:03 - >> Perfect. >> Okay. >> Tada. My noodle appeared. >> There you go. So, don't hit this. >> Hands on the club in the right spot. Okay. And what we're really going to look for as we do this, we're going to make sure your path is going somewhat out to the right and your face to path is pointed to the [music] left. >> Okay? I don't care how much. Right? Now, all we're working for is those two numbers to basically be the opposite of one [music] another. So, path to the

00:03:27 - right, face the path to the left.

00:03:33 - Oops. Hit the noodle. >> Okay. >> Okay. So, you're totally fine. >> [music] >> So here's your perfect example of where the slice comes into play. So you can see how your path was to the left >> and your face was to the right. So you basically have those pointed the opposite direction of one another. That is why the ball curves to the right. So what we want to do is flip-flop that. Okay. Nice. >> There we go. >> Perfect. So just like that. So, this is going to give you a really good

00:04:10 - indicator of what we were looking for. So, you can see how your path was really close to zero, >> but you see how this number, the face to path was much more to the left. >> Yes, >> that's what you're really looking for. So, if you struggle with hitting your driver straight, whether it's curving the ball too far to the right or too far to the left, your path and your face to path are really the ones you want to pay attention to. For most golfers, Peyton, I see their path too far to the left and

00:04:33 - their face to path too far to the right. That's why they slice. That's why it doesn't go very far. Flip it and go the opposite way. Okay. [music] What you're really looking for, it's not necessarily to try to hit a straight drive. You're looking for a consistent curvature. And as you get that curvature, then you start to bring that pattern and make it a little bit narrower. Okay. >> Okay. It's not about trying to hit the ball straight. It's about trying to

00:04:52 - [music] create a consistent pattern with how the ball curves. And then you just replicate that and then hone it in, trying to get it back closer to the [music] middle. Perfect. Seem okay. >> Yep. Seems good. >> Cool. So, if you struggle with driver, there's the recipe.