2 Tricks to Driving Off the Deck

Here are three tips to help your drive:

Shoulders on Line, Feet Shut

Shoulders square to the target, feet slightly shut. Not one person really speaks about this shot very much, but if it comes up at all you've probably been told, "If you're going to hit the driver off the deck you've got to hit a big swing. It's the only way to get the ball up."

Actually, that's not correct at all. If you have enough club head quickness there's no need to just hit a big cut. Of course you can hit a big cut if that's what you want to do. You can still strike it well, and high, and far, but you lose control of the ball and you lose length.

For this shot, you're trying to hit the ball dead straight. Maybe a slight cut if you want to, but you can actually work the ball both ways when striking the driver off the deck. Take your regular driver arrangement, with your feet a little bit shut. Line up your shoulders and club face square to the target line.

Keeping your feet slightly shut helps shallow out your path on the way back and through. That's important, because if you have a very steep path you're just going to heave that club head right down in the earth.

You need to sweep the ball, but you still have to hit down on it with the driver when you're hitting it off the deck.

Club Head Inside Shallows the Plane

There are a couple little tricks to make this shot functional. First is that you can see in the first photo below that the club face is dead square to his feet line. That's intentional. That's planned. Rather than focusing on getting it square to the shoulder plane or the target line, you want the club head a little bit inside.

Why would you want that? Squaring the club face to the feet line helps you come through the ball more shallow. If you take the club back very steep you're going to have to redirect it on the way back down.

Club face square to feet line (left), left forearm rotation, club face square to feet line (left), left forearm rotation (center, right). You want it to go back and through on a very comparable plane, so you want to take it back very shallow.

As you go back you're actually getting more revolution in your left forearm from off the ball, to get the club coming back behind your hands. You want that spin in your hands because it helps shallow out the path on the way back. As you keep going to the top you're still rotating the left forearm, getting the arm plane a little shallower than usual.

As you get closer to the top, even though you've rotated your left forearm pretty aggressively taking the club back, the club face is still square to your forearm.