Exercise to Strike up on a Modern Driver

Two common faults I often see with a driver set up when teaching are; weight too left sided (pic1), and open shoulder alignment (pic2). These are both caused by the alteration with the ball position for the driver. As it's moved left in the stance for a right handed player, the weight tends to go with it, and the shoulders open at the same time.

This encourages people to strike down and across the ball, rather than up and through the target line. With modern drivers, the sweet spot is a lot higher, and therefore it is crucial that you do the latter. This needs to start at set up by creating a "launch pad" address.



Picture 1	Picture 2

If you look at picture 3, you will see the exaggerated shoulder tilt I'm looking for compared to the earlier images. This will get 60% of the weight onto the right side, and put the left shoulder much higher than the right. This will encourage an upward strike at the ball.

A good exercise to get the correct feeling of creating a "launch pad" set up is shown in picture 4. Find an uphill slope and set yourself up with the contours. This will automatically set your weight onto the right side and give you the shoulder tilt required. If you are able to hit some shots from this position ensure you keep your weight on the right side and get the feeling of "staying behind" the ball. This will help you get more out of modern drivers as you need a much higher launch angle but with a low spin rate.