How to Hit Your Ball and Reach Better Distance
Are you frustrated at your inability to hit the ball as far as you intend to? There may be some things you are not doing right. These errors are not allowing you to hit the ball with enough efficiency to earn you long shot distances.
How to Hit Your Ball Farther
1. Center Contact
Getting the farthest distance from your swing isn’t just about making contact with the ball with force. The centeredness of the ball contact is just as important.
If you don’t hit the center of the ball, you lose some shot distance. A way to know where you are hitting the ball is to spray your club so that it makes a mark when you hit the ball.
Practice how to hit the ball in its center and you would earn yourself a longer shot distance.
2. Raise the ball higher on the tee peg.
Whenever you are aiming for a long-distance shot, never drive your tee peg deep into the ground. Doing so would not allow you to get the best upward lift on the ball.
When you don’t drive your tee peg deep, you would hit the ball at a better launch angle. In addition, there is a reduction in your backspin when the ball is set higher.
3. Fast Swing
You probably already guessed this. The faster your swing is, the more forcefully you hit the ball. When you are bringing the driver down in a swing, make it fast.
Don’t swing slowly. Also, you have to be careful not to lose control of your swing. All these take constant practice and exercise.
4. Wider Swing Arc
A wide swing will help you hit the ball farther. Take your hands as far back as they can go without losing your form.
The best way to do this is to learn how best to execute a shoulder turn correctly. And when your shoulder turns, your hip would have to follow.
Also, the heel of your forward foot might lift off the ground slightly. All these body movements would make their contributions to helping you hit the ball farther.
This longer swing arc may be the extra leverage you need to get the farthest distance out of every hit.
5. The Proper Posture
Your hitting posture alone could increase your shot distance significantly. Practice the right hitting posture for every single shot, far or near. When you want to hit the ball, do these:
- Work on Your Grip
Getting a good grip on your driver is the first step. If you are right-handed, adjust your left hand slightly inward, making your knuckles face the direction of your target.
Practice gripping your driver in this manner until it becomes natural to you. Also, don’t make your grip too tight. With this hand position, you would get a firmer drive through the ball when you hit it.
- Get the Perfect Spine Angle
This involves the positioning of your upper body such that it is slightly tilted away from your target. To achieve this posture, grip the driver at your sternum and allow the clubhead to float in the midpoint between both knees.
Then tilt your upper body slightly in the direction opposite your target. Keep going till the clubhead is touching your lead leg. This tilt position allows you to get the best out of your backswing to give you a more powerful shot.
- Move Your Hips
Don’t let your hands alone do the swing. Let your body help you out. As you are rearing your arms backward for a swing, let your hips turn too.
And when you are bringing the driver down on a downswing, drive it more with your hips rather than your arms. The twisting momentum and the strength from your hips up to your arms would combine to make your swing faster.
- Adjust Your Weight With the Swing
The transitioning of your center of gravity as you make the swing is also important. When you are at your farthest backswing, make sure that about 60% of your weight is resting on your hind leg.
And as you bring the swing down, transfer your weight from the back leg to the front leg so that your front leg now carries the bulk of your weight.
- Straighten Your Lead Arm
Your lead arm is your left arm if you are right-handed. To get the maximum distance from your shot, you have to keep the lead arm straight.
When the lead arm is straight, the distance your clubhead travels before hitting the ball is increased. This allows you to hit the ball even farther.
- Don’t Forget to Snap Your Hand
This last step might seem insignificant, but it may contribute to your shot distance in ways you didn’t know.
For a right-handed golfer, try to snap your right hand through the ball at that final moment before you hit the ball when you bring down the swing.
This simple move would boost your club speed so you can get an extra flight distance out of your swing.
To gain a mastery of the right posture, you have to practice every step slowly first. Do it over and over until your muscles get familiar with the routine.
When the moves are ingrained in your muscle memory, you would find yourself hitting your ball with greater power without even thinking about it.
6. Hit the Gym
You may need to upgrade your instrument or work on your posture. But ultimately, you need to be able to generate enough power for a long flight distance.
You need to build your strength through exercises. Get your fitness trainer to show you the exercises that can increase your strength. Your balance is also something exercise can help to improve.
7. Equipment Upgrade
Hitting the ball farther can be achieved by upgrading your equipment. If you have your posture set right but not the right equipment, you may still lose out on some flight distance.
- Use a launch Monitor
A launch monitor allows you to learn from your own errors. The launch monitor helps you to calculate the characteristics of your launch, such as attack angle, launch angle, ball speed, and many more.
This way, your teaching pro would find it easy to know where you are lacking and how to make necessary adjustments to give you the best results.
- Change your ball
Sometimes it’s not you, it’s the ball. There are various materials that golf balls are made up of. As a result, some can travel at higher speeds than others. For long-distance shots, balls with low compression are the best.
- Replace worn grips
Worn out grips make the club more slippery. And when the club is slippery, you tend to hold it tighter when you swing so it doesn’t slip out of your hands.
But a too-tight grip would not allow you to get the speed and control you need to get the best shot. That is why you have to replace those old grips with new, firmer ones.
Conclusion
All the tips in this article require constant practice. The more you practice, the better you get, and the farther your ball goes. So there you have it, how to hit your ball farther.
