Driver and Ball Position

[alistaird]

I've been struggling with Driver - a real mix of straight left, straight right and the occasional straight straight

I play the driver off the left heel - I'm right handed, and basically line up feet together, splay the left foot slightly, step out with the right foot. Now I also have a pretty consistent in to out swing of 1-2 degrees from the GCQuad data from lessons, what happens though especially with driver is I either close the club by a few degrees or leave it open a few degrees. Hence resulting in pushes and pulls (fortunately generally not hooks and slices.). I recently constructed a 3 Wood (and I've never played a 3 Wood much - Heaven Wood is normally by longest FW) and found it much more consistent in direction.

I play the 3 Wood probably 4 - 6 inches off my left heel.

So I'm trying the Driver a couple of inches inside my left heel to see if that helps with consistency.

So, has anyone else found that directional dispersion is very susceptible to ball position with the driver?

A

 

[Chef23]

I would say try moving the ball back a ball width or two and maybe tee the ball a bit lower. You hit it farther if you tee it up higher and hit more up on the ball but I tend to hit it straighter when it is teed lower and a bit farther back.

 

[jlew]

For me as well!

 

[TxAggie2018]

Ball position makes a big difference as to where my driver goes. Sometimes I will get too carried away with the "tee it high and let it fly" thing, teeing up a ball too high and too far out by my left toes, and I'll just rip a dead pull into the next fairway.

But a 4-6 inch gap between your driver and your 3W sounds like your setup actually isn't that sensitive to ball position. That's probably what, 3 golf ball widths?

I would try playing your driver further back near that 3W to see what happens. If that tightens your drives up, then rent time on that GC Quad to see what your launch conditions look like.

Playing a wood back in your stance makes it hard to hit up on the ball, and the difference in distance between hitting up and hitting down with a driver can be 10-20 yards easily. It may end up being a distance vs accuracy tradeoff, or it may not end up being a tradeoff at all. I'd be curious to see where it ends up.

 

[merlebo02]

I was having the same problem and what seemed to help (not completely fix) was an adjustment with my grip.. I went back and read the section in Ben Hogans book on the grip..

 

[NeverWiff]

I did much of the same experimenting with ball position but found that a driver fitting into the proper shaft went a LONG way to solving some of my directional issues. Just throwing that out there.