Mike Rugg from the Steve Dresser Golf Academy at True Blue Golf Club talks about the most common question they get at the school: “How do I hit it farther?” In this golf tip, he shows a few different things you can do to smash that golf ball off the tee!
Mike Rugg:
Hi, my name is Mike Rugg. I’m one of the instructors here at the Steve Dresser Golf Academy, located at True Blue and Caledonia golf courses in Pawleys Island, South Carolina. And what I wanted to bring up and talk about today is one of the things that we always encounter is people coming in and they want to hit the ball longer, especially senior golfers. So Father Time is undefeated, so I have some low hanging fruit that I think can benefit not just senior golfers, but all golfers.
We can make some adjustments in our stance. One of the things I like to see is the right foot pulled off the target line. I like to see the right foot turned out, if you’re right-handed, left foot if you’re left-handed. And I like to see the ball played basically opposite the left shoulder to the inside of the left shoulder, depending on certain circumstances in your swing. I like to see a wide stance. A lot of golfers think as they get older, they should narrow their stance. Well, unfortunately, it doesn’t give them a good base of support, I have found.
Now in the swing, I like to see the hips move. It was a really big thing in the 90s to teach the X factor, where we rotate the upper body over a still or solid lower body. Well, besides producing a lot of bad backs as we get older, that’s just no way to swing the golf club. So I like to see the hips move throughout the swing unencumbered. Now, can it be overdone? Absolutely. A few other things I like to see. One of the things that we see here is people constantly coming and saying they want to keep their head down. Well, we’ve been very successful getting people, they’ll allow their head to move slightly to the right. And, “Slightly,” it’s a very fine line, but we’ve never seen a really good player ever go this way. So a little bit to the right will help free up the shoulders, free up the hips, make a big old rotation or turn.
The other thing I like to see is let the heels lift, specifically the left heel. We like to see that to get up in the air, gives us a longer arc. We can produce more speed, and most importantly, at the finish, we always want to see your spikes. We don’t want to be flatfooted.
And one final thing, it seems to be fashionable also to swing slow back and slow through. We’ve had some success with people to speed up their backswing to a certain extent. So not really going slow to fast, but having speed initially away from the ball, and that’s allowed people to swing a little more momentum through the shot.
A couple other things that have been really helpful is to go get fitted. Not everybody, as they get older, can hit an eight-degree driver with an extra stiff shaft. There’s technologies all over the place using TrackMan and all other kinds of launch monitors. They can give us really a good fit for you, so get fit. There’s all different combinations. And finally, don’t forget the physical fitness. Stretching, mobility exercises, strength training. It just will help you overall have a better standard quality of life, but also allow you to get that extra 20 yards that you need.