Use This Incredible Drill To Hit Driver Longer

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Transcript Summary-

If you were to join me on the lesson tee for your very first golf lesson, what would be your number one request? For most people who come and see me, it’s something along the lines of, “Danny, I’d love to be more consistent… and if I’m honest, I’d also love to hit the golf ball further.” The thing is, one of the most surprising results I get with a lot of my students is that they end up hitting the ball much further and striking it much better—with a shorter swing. They’ve been trying to gain distance by swinging longer, but shortening it up actually gives them better results. And I’ve got one of my all-time favorite drills to help with exactly that, and I want to share it with you in this video.

Before we dive in, if you’re new to the channel or it’s one of the first lessons you’ve seen from me, please consider subscribing. I release videos like this every single week to help you improve your game—and you never have to remember a thing. Everything’s always put into a free downloadable practice guide linked in the description box below.

So, let’s take a look. Hopefully what you saw there was a relatively short golf swing with an 8-iron that traveled 166 yards. And I did that by doing two things: I allowed the clubhead to flow beautifully—but I didn’t let it control me. Instead, I worked my body in a way that could control and stabilize that freely swinging clubhead. I want to show you exactly how I do that.

I had a new student this week, Jess, who came to see me after watching quite a few of the videos. She’d picked up on the idea of swinging the clubhead freely, which is brilliant—freedom is essential. But here’s the issue: when you let the club swing freely, it has a lot of force, and if you’re not careful, that force can throw you off balance. What I often see is that players, in trying to stay in control, end up tensing everything and turning into a very wooden, restricted swing. That’s not the answer either.

So how do we find that perfect blend of flow and control? Well, I want to help you experience what that feels like, and that’s where this drill comes in—the same one I used with Jess. To strike the ball well, especially off the ground, we want to hit the ball before the club reaches the bottom of the arc. That means we need our weight forward, favoring that lead side. And at the same time, we want clubhead speed—we can’t be steering or guiding the club. We need speed and body control.

Here’s the secret: while great players look effortless, their bodies are actually working incredibly hard to stabilize the club through impact. If my body was as relaxed as the club, I’d be all over the place. So, with Jess, we started with a super simple version of the drill. I said, “Look, I want you to swing as freely as you like, but then I want you to stop short. Really short.” We used a line on the mat as a reference, and the goal was to finish with 90% of her weight on the lead side, arms extended, club angled back, trail shoulder low—all the key components of a solid impact position.

The amazing thing is, when done right, the ball still goes a long way. Jess started hitting it 50 yards with just this small swing. I even did one myself and hit it 100 yards. The key here is using your body as the braking system. Most players try to stop the club with their hands or arms, but that doesn’t work. You need your weight forward so that your lead leg can act like a brake against the momentum of the club swinging through.

Now, we didn’t just stop there. Once Jess had the feeling down, we moved to step two. I told her to keep swinging the club freely—back and through—but to still stop it short on the finish. And guess what? Even with that super short follow-through, I hit one 160 yards with an 8-iron. That’s massive. So don’t worry about making it look elegant or long—you’ll get much more consistency and control by stopping short with speed and with structure.

This is exactly what someone like Tommy Fleetwood does. He loved this drill so much he actually plays with it. You’ll notice his finishes are often short and controlled, but the ball still flies. For me, my stock 8-iron is around 170 yards, and with this shorter motion I’m comfortably hitting 166. That’s the power of control.

People often ask if this works with driver. Absolutely! With a driver, the club is even freer, so the need for control is even greater. Yes, the setup changes slightly—ball further forward, hands more neutral—but the concept is identical. Even with a “punch” style driver swing, I hit one 290 yards. And again, it’s all about having a freely swinging club matched with a body that’s bracing and stabilizing through impact.

So give this a try. It’s going to transform your ball striking. You’ll feel more control, gain effortless power, and hopefully stop chasing distance with long, inconsistent swings. If you enjoyed the video, please give it a thumbs up, maybe share it with a friend, and if you haven’t already, hit that subscribe button just down here. If you’d like help with your driver specifically, click the video right here. Until next week—have a wonderful golfing week.

Full Transcript- So if you could to join me on the lesson tee for your first golf lesson what would be your number one request if you're anything like my students that come and see me for the first time it's something like I'd love to be more consistent Danny but really I'd also love to hit golf ball further well what if I told you that one of the things I do with many many students that come and see me is I actually get them to hit the ball a lot further strike it much better with a shorter golf swing so they've been trying to hit it further with a longer golf swing but actually me shortening the whole thing up they actually hit it a lot further i give them this one of my all-time favorite golf drills to help them feel this and I'd love to share it with you in this golf video before I do though look if you're new to the channel it's one of the first lessons of mine please consider subscribing release lessons just like this every single week to try and help you improve your game plus you never have to remember a thing everything we do here I'll put into a free download practice guide in the description box below

let's have a look at this so hopefully what you saw there was a reasonably short golf swing there with an eight iron that's traveled 166 yards now to do that I'm doing two things one I've got a lovely flowing club head it's hugely important but I'm not letting this club head even though it's flowing ruin my golf swing i've worked my body in such a way that's controlling this club head i'd love to share with you exactly how I'm doing it so I had a brand new student this week Jess come and see me who had been watching quite a few of the videos and had actually noticed that I've been working very hard on allowing this club head to swing freely which is great but when you swing the club freely which is so so important the club has a lot of energy and a lot of force and what it can do if you're not careful is that force can take you out of control on the way back you see how my body's not controlling it i'm swinging the club back freely freely which is brilliant but my body's not withstanding that force on the way through same thing happens to a number of my students when they're swinging through here the club's taking them all the way through and they're going through with the club they're not controlling it what's amazing what's brilliant about it however is at least they have this club swinging freely because the reverse to that is when people feel like this club's too out of control instead of doing what they should be doing which is understanding how to control their body they then control everything and now they look a little bit more like this right and now it's all wooden so how do we get that balance between a beautifully flowing club whilst at the same time giving you control it's not an easy thing to explain so what I want to do is I want to help you experience what it's going to take for you to strike that ball solid every time but also ramp up that speed with control and to do that I want to share with you the exact exact same drill I shared with Jess now to strike any ball on the ground we want to strike the ball before the club gets to its lowest point of the arc yeah so we naturally need to have a lot of weight favoring this lead side here now the other thing we need is we want club head speed so this club needs to be traveling uber fast we can't be controlling and steering it if you do that you've lost all your speed so we need both speed of the club but also control of that body the body needs to be used to control it now the best players in the world they make it look effortless but a little I'm going to let you into a little secret they make it look effortless but what you cannot feel is what's going on in my body my muscles in my body are working incredibly hard to break and stabilize this club going through if my all my body was relaxed as is the club I'd be all over the place right so I need a way to kind of control it and I also need a way to help you feel this right so this is kind of what I started with Jess i said "Look what we're going to do Jess we're going to teach you the sensations but we're going to do it gradually." Now and I say gradually a lot of my students that love this drill it's a Tommy favorite of Tommy Fleewoods um they start small but very quickly they're rushing through this drill and I don't want you to do that i want you to take it step by step so with Jess I said "Look what I want you to do is make some swings i don't care how long you swing initially but the key is here i want you to stop really short now I'm going to use this kind of line here in the mat here as a guideline i'm going to put my weight here i want to finish with my weight 90% of my weight on my lead side here you'll notice here my arms are nice and straight i've got this club here i've got an angle in my in my trail wrist here my trail shoulder look is down here all this is kind of really really important compared to where most people are at impact here not as much weight on their front foot a lot of flickiness here maybe even the right shoulder's too high there's lots of things going on so I love this starting point now what it's going to do it's going to train you the feel of impact but what you're also going to notice is you c you can't see this you're going to see me look make it look fairly simple but what you are going to be able to see is the muscles that I'm using to brace this golf club the feeling you're going to get will come directly from this drill so let's have a look at this in action so there's no big shots to start with

so we got let's go to 100 yards probably gone further than I thought it was going to go most like with Jess she was hitting about 50 yards when she was doing this okay now what I'm doing here is is you'll notice I am doing my best to stop it as quickly as possible now like I said with Jess when she started this initially she made it a little bit wooden i needed to remind her to keep swinging this club head further forward and the way you stop it isn't by stiffening up everything here the way you stop it is making sure that you've got the braking system in place and this is really important because what Jess found was is that she was trying to stop it short here but there's so much weight still back here she wasn't able to as soon as she in a sense started to get this kind of weight forward once the weight's here naturally now we can use this leg look as a braking system now I won't bo the details how it happens but there's a force pushing this way and that pushes in the opposite direction where this club's throwing which then stabilizes it and breaks this club it's really important if you don't have that weight there you won't be able to do it this is why we don't move on from this small drill to start with we keep it really small until we've nailed this and then gradually we build it up and that's what we did with Jess so we moved on to step two where I said to her "Keep maintaining the flowing golf club." So I don't care how far back you go now just literally keep it flowing but what we're going to do we're going to stop it as quickly as you can and just watch how far this goes with what is incredibly short follow through here

now you'll notice I went a little bit further on that one there but look at that i'm finishing almost halfway now and that's got 160 yards with an eight iron right so what we do is we gradually build this up but notice here I am not trying to finish in this lovely elegant position because the problem is there's no speed there and it kind of looks kind of floaty and maybe even rhythmical at times but you don't have control of the club what we want to have here is you want to and for a lot of players by the way these first two steps is where I would spend most of the time and if you look at someone like a Tommy Fleetwood when he plays notice how he finishes very much here where did that come from this exact drill he loved the drill so much that he just played with it and you'll find here is my distance with eight is not going to be hugely different i probably get up to maybe 170 as a as a stock shot um but notice here with this this is going to be comfortable for me if I swing here and I get this sensation I'm going to probably reach my limit with a nice short swing there finishing about here not right around here look and we're up to like 166 so the end that is close now to my limit with a uh 7 when I say limit under control cuz that's what we want we don't want just power we want to be able to hit that ball in the direction that we want now a lot of people said to me you know does this work for driver absolutely i mean ultimately you know just like any golf club you know or any shot you your you know this club if anything is going to be swinging much much freer right so you need to be able to control the forces with the driver and to do that there are some sort of changes obviously we're not going to be uh have our hands way ahead here the ball positions is going to be in a slightly different position but the drill remains the same what I'd still probably do I'd have the ball forward in my stance here but what I'm still going to do is I'm still going to imagine finishing to start with short yeah to get that sensation here so let's have a look at this in action now remember the purpose of a drill is to provide you with the sensations that what really good players feel right now you can't see a lot of what I'm doing here you can only see the drill that I'm doing but I can tell you that I'm experiencing here the muscles in my body gently working and stabilizing this club they're not relaxed because when they're relaxed things start moving around i can't control this right am I trying to tense them up no they are acting as a break while I throw this club as freely and as effortless as I possibly can right so I'll do a small driver for you now so I'm going to do the same thing here with driver get myself set up here and what I'm going to do is I'm literally going to brace for impact we're going to do almost like a a punch with driver same principle here get myself set up here get himself in a driver position here let's have a look at this almost a punch with driver don't know if that's going to go well there you go look 290 yards with what is in theory a punch shot how do you do this you can't do it with just this looseness you need one thing swinging freely while the other part of the system here is bracing for impact and allowing that club to catapult through hugely hugely important i hope you enjoyed this video it's going to be super help your ball striking it will help you with effortless power and hopefully what it'll do is stop you just swinging longer and longer and losing consistency if you did enjoy the video give it a thumbs up maybe share it with one of your friends and of course look if you're new to the channel press that subscribe button right down here if you would love some help with driver click this video right here but until next week have a wonderful golfing.