How To "Hit Up" with Driver

in this video I'm going to share how you guys can hit upwards on the driver correctly now I think a lot of people have a good understanding that they have to hit upwards on it but they may not have the right idea of which body parts to move or which movements are involved more so if you enjoyed this video be sure to hit the like button and if you are new to the Channel Please Subscribe because that'll really help me to create more videos like this for you guys now let's get started so when most people hit the driver they kind of know that they have to hit up on it because the balls teed up off the ground but they tend to use like their wrists or they don't kind of bend their body correctly they shouldn't be using uh or moving the wrist differently at all but from the face on view the first kind of thing I want to explain to you guys is just some common mistakes and then I'll kind of show you kind of how to do it correctly or what movements are involved to allow you to hit up on it without manipulating the wrist too much so from the face on view when I have my body position for a driver you can see that the ball position is typically more forward in the stance my head positions further behind and my stance is wider okay now more specifically you want to make sure that the ball position is kind of in line with the lead shoulder okay the very general rule that people think about is that the ball is kind of like just inside of the left foot but that's not really specific enough okay it has to be in line with the lead shoulder only because we want to make sure that when you strike the ball that your left arm and the shaft is pretty much in a straight line at impact okay so if the ball position was too far back most people would hit the ball with too much shaftline right and they would kind of hit it more like an iron and start to hit downwards on it and if the ball is too far forward then then people will actually start to swing more across the golf ball um or start to get their wrists a bit more active and lean the shaft more backwards okay so it's important that you get the ball position in line with that lead shoulder after you set up your body okay but when it comes to hitting upwards on the golf ball the most common thing or the the most logical thing that that comes to mind for most people is that they just want to keep their weight on their Trail side for too long through impact okay and for a lot of people I I can see why that would make sense okay because you want to swing up on it and you need to keep your body and everything more behind it which is true but you don't need to have your weight stuck on your right foot like not the vast majority of your weight at least the problem with keeping too much of your weight on your Trail foot is that it will sacrifice um your ability to swing the club in the right path I know in past videos I I've talked about this before but the more weight that you keep on your Trail foot you'll stay behind it but you'll tend to like open up your body more and you'll swing like over and across the golf ball to the left so just from the side view so you can see it when I get to the Top If I swing down and I keep all my weight on my right foot you can see that I'll start to spin out my hands will kind of get in front of me the club head will kind of swing out in front and I'll deliver the club from outside and AC cross it left okay so the more that you do that as well you'll you'll also tend to swing less up on it you'll tend to swing more downwards as well the correct thing to do with a driver is you have to make sure that your hips will still go forward okay they you still want your hips to go ahead of your chest but you want to make sure that you bend backwards okay what people don't realize is that the starting position with the head is further to the right of the ball all right so that means when you turn to the top your head's more to the right typically if you were to draw like a straight line up from the ball when I take it back you don't want like your head right up against that line okay not with driver because you're St starting more to the right when you turn you should typically see a little bit more of a space between your upper back and that ball line that shows you that your head's staying to the right and then when you when you come down with it you can see that my hips are still going left I'm still feeling like my weight kind of moves a little bit more to my lead side but you can see how my body is bending differently my head is kind of tilting more to the right my body is bending to the trail side so that way when I come in I can still extend out the longest Point more so right at the ball without having to try to flip the club or or kind of stay really far behind it with my hips and my weight so you can kind of see if I just take some practice swings if I stayed right on top of it and I didn't really bend my body I can't really Swing Swing upwards on it very well I have to I have to use my wrists so if you keep your weight on your right foot you can kind of see I'll have a trouble reaching for the golf ball so I'll have to swing more over and across it to catch the ball right and that's going to make it really difficult for you to control the direction as well okay so just remember that you still want the weight to go left but you have to make sure that your body bends so your head stays behind the golf ball enough so you can still see my hips are forward my chest is kind of behind my belt okay and when I'm doing that then I can actually get my radius to extend out kind of near impact a bit more so mistake number two now with the driver for when people try to swing upwards on the golf ball they actually try to pull their arms or they pull the grip closer towards them because when they're getting closer into impact they they can already kind of feel like the club is too far extended out or that it's going to drive the drive into the ground too much and again it's related to where your head is positioned relative to the ball or if your if your weight is really far back on the right foot again you're you're probably going to hit the ground really far behind the golf ball unless you do something to kind of shorten out the longest point so that'll come in the form of you either pulling the arms up or pulling the grip upwards you're going to add a lot of extension to the wrist okay or you'll have to swing over the top to move the low Point further forward but in most cases most people are still kind of too much on top of the golf ball with driver so when they come in they feel like they're going to swing downwards on it and they kind of shrug their shoulders and pull the grip up like this okay and that's going to basically shorten out the radius just enough to where they kind of miss the ground and and then maybe catch the ball a little bit but when a player does that they have a really difficult time not only with contact because they can either hit the ground early if they don't pull up enough and if they pull up too much then they'll hit the top but besides the contact they'll also struggle with Club face control because when the arms pull up and the arms Bend there's a lot of movement in the club face because the hands and wrists are really active again this is all kind of related to kind of how your body bends but if you do things correctly with the body you should be able to keep this lead arm straight without without any issue okay just so you guys know what all the mistakes are now I'm just going to go over things from the face on view and just going to go over the movement a bit more in detail um and just go over certain positions or uh body parts to look out for uh the next time you guys analyze yourself so when explaining the movement um I usually kind of get people to focus on the the position of the lead shoulder okay so if I were to set up to this ball and there was a circle drawn uh right where my lead shoulder is now when I get to the top of the back swing obviously again like I was saying before my my head has to stay to the right okay when I come in you'll notice that if my body is bending correctly my hips are going forward my my head is staying back my body's bending to the trail side relative to where it started at a dress you'll notice that my lead shoulder actually starts to move more up so if you're trying to keep your lead arm straight remember we don't want this to bend okay we don't want to have to bend this to kind of pull the club upwards okay like from from this way but if we were to bend our El and keep the lead arm straight and that lead shoulder moves upwards higher than where it was at a dress then that'll basically kind of like shorten out the the length of the longest Point enough to where it doesn't touch the ground okay now with an iron right usually that that lead shoulder will actually just be a bit more level Orit bit more in front of where it was relative to a dress so if this was if I was hitting an iron here that same Circle was on my shoulder if I get to the top I come down by the time I strike it my lead shoulder is already a little bit more in front of where it was that way when I extend out the radius or the longest point it forms more so after the golf ball okay and that would signify that I've hit downwards on it but with driver that lead shoulder doesn't go more forward or isn't positioned more forward it is positioned more kind of upwards okay just because of how much more my body is bent to the right so that's the that's the really good visual that not a lot of people think about when they think about weight shift and staying behind it stuff like that they they they just keep their entire bodies behind it or they just kind of treat it like an iron and then just trying to feel they struggle with feeling like really cramped here because they're just pulling the grip closer towards them okay but I'm just trying to tell you guys that you can keep the the the length of your lead arm the same but if you were to bend correctly you can kind of see I don't touch the ground I'm not touching the ground because my lead shoulder has I'm bending my body is moving more upwards and around me so that's a really important thing to think about that'll encourage you to get your hips to still go forward enough and your body to bend enough like this so that your your Club doesn't reach the ground if that lead shoulder was staying level then yes you can see that my driver now touches the ground okay but if it goes up upwards then I don't touch the ground anymore and just to add one more Point okay um now that I'm just talking about the position position of the Sleep shoulder so again if if you are a player that kind of keeps their entire bodies too far on the trail side again if I were to draw that Circle at my dress position if I were to do that my keep my whole body you can see that my my lead shoulders actually further behind where it started if it's further behind then when I do extend out the radius it's going to be really far behind the golf ball that's probably again where I'm going to hit the golf ball or hit the ground now that'll either force me to have to again pull up on the on the shaft right to shorten out the radius so I don't touch the ground or I have to swing more outside and across to get the club steep enough to come in so that the moves a low Point further forward that's how the position of this lead shoulder um can affect you know your ability to hit the ground in the right right place or avoid the ground and and um and hit up on the driver correctly okay so just remember that that lead shoulder has to stay kind of in line with the ball but it'll just kind of move more up you don't want that LE shoulder to stay behind where it started or you don't want it to be more in front of where it started with driver so it should stay right in line with the ball but remember if your hips are going forward and everything goes up then you should be able to keep this straight without touching the ground okay so a really great drill that you guys can do um just using your driver head cover or any head cover that you have is you can place it pretty much like a foot and a half uh in front of the golf ball you can see how I placed it there that's there just because if you were to hit downwards on it you're going to obviously touch that if you were to hit up on it enough or hit up up on it correctly you should be able to avoid um hitting that uh head cover so now when I'm going to hit this golf ball you don't have to do um any kind of full swings things like that but when I'm going to hit it I'm obviously thinking about you know in my back swing my my head kind of stays to the right of the ball when I'm coming down into impact my hip feels like it still goes forward but but my body is kind of bending back so if I were to just use my left arm remember I'm just I don't need I shouldn't have to bend my lead arm at all okay so I'm still thinking about my lead shoulder kind of moving more upwards okay it's not moving behind and up it's not moving forward okay cuz then I'm going to hit down on it okay I want to keep it in line with the ball but then it's kind of going to move move up just a little bit just enough to avoid the ground so you can do very small swings to start just like how I'm doing right here so when when I'm hitting you can kind of go right you can kind of see I didn't have to bend this arm I avoided that head cover successfully right and I bent my body I was really conscious about that feeling like my lead shoulder kind of moves up okay so you can hit a few shots like that just do it very slowly to start off um and then you can kind of add a bit more speed to it um until you can do it with a full swing so I'm going to hit a few shots um with a full swing and just see how I do so I'm just just going to hit a couple really small first just to show you guys how you should be practicing it but I'm basically just chipping the driver just focusing on my body movement to start so I'm going back okay I'm I'm feeling like my body is bent can to do that a couple times and once you do get comfortable then I mean you can try to apply it with a full swing so if you do things correctly you shouldn't touch that head cover if you can do that successfully then that probably means that you're hitting up on it enough you shouldn't have to like stay stay way behind it to hit up on it or you don't have to use your wrist so excessively thank you guys so much for watching now if you have any questions at all you can leave a comment down below be sure to follow me on my Instagram at Jonathan Koss and other than that I'll see you guys on the next video

Channel: Jonathan Kim-Moss Golf

Views: 54,363

Keywords: golf tips, Jonathan Kim moss, Jonathan Kim moss golf, driver backswing, driver downswing, driver follow through, driver impact drill, how to stop slicing the driver, how to stop hooking the driver, driver stance, driver swing, tiger woods, Rory Mcilroy, golf tips beginners, driver swing basics, how to tilt in the downswing golf, how to straighten your arms in the golf swing, taylormade, ping, callaway, titleist, driver distance golf, increase distance with driver golf

Id: pZDuwdTH0Vw

Length: 13min 56sec (836 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2024