Hi, I’m Rick Sessinghaus, PGA coach and coach for Collin Morikawa.
We all want more speed with our driver, right? It’s a club that can actually be quite helpful if we get it out there a little bit longer. So speed is actually created more from the hips than any other element. Now look at Rory McIlroy, right? His hips are very fast as they come through. Most of us can’t do that, but we do need to maximize it.
Unfortunately, a lot of people rely on the effort of arms, shoulders and chest to create speed when the speed actually comes from the ground up and using the hips now to rotate more. This is very important to build yourself up slowly and actually start to engage this part.
One of my favorite stretches is to take your driver straight out in front of you here. Imagine that somebody had their hand here and you’re going to give them a clap. Now, I’m not going to get there by just using my arms and shoulders, but I’m going to have to use my lower body to get there.
And this is going to create a lot of a stretch as we come through. I’m not hitting, I’m swinging and we can get that feeling and then start doing some practice swings where we’re feeling that the hips are separating from the upper body.
It’s going to take some work. You’re going to create more speed. Then we actually swing the club and fire those hips first with the rotation. You put it all together now, and all I’m focusing on is hip speed on the downswing.
At first, you may lose a little bit of control, but you’re going to start to get the timing down. The loss of control can easily be managed by training the golf mental game aspect with flow triggers and routines. So club head speed has a lot to do with hip speed. More specifically, rotation. Start doing some drills, practice swings and then full swings to get that separation from hips to upper body and you’re going to increase your club head speed.