3 Data-Driven Moves to Unlock Driver Speed

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[00:00] [Music] So, let me show you how I've been using OPTIMOTION to try and help me with distance, certainly in my backswing. I'm going to try and make a better version of my backswing on this shot.

[00:18] Okay. So, basically, I can get quite arm-depthy.

[00:23] Gotcha.

[00:25] So, nice and straight. Look, it won't be very fast, unfortunately, but it was straight-ish. So basically, I can do a lot of work with my arms getting across my chest, and then I don't have to do that much work here, right?

[00:43] If I do more work with rotating my shoulders a long way, the club gets really long. Now, it doesn't affect my accuracy—I feel like I can hit target—but it does affect my ball speeds. Club head speeds come down a little bit.

[01:00] Yeah.

[01:02] Where if I feel like I rotate my shoulders a lot, but then don't get loads of depth from my arms, to try and keep my arms out this side—

[01:10] Sure.

[01:12] To me that just feels like crazy stretched and reached out.

[01:16] Yeah. So for you, do you feel like a lot of amateur golfers, in that sense, sort of fake a turn?

[01:23] Yeah, it's exactly that. You see it all day long with amateurs—excessive bend in this arm, arms going across chest, right? Swing on camera looks big and long like they've done a full turn, but then when we measure them or look at them on things like OPTIMOTION, we can see they haven't.

[01:44] Cool. Let's go take a look and see what the difference is on OPTIMOTION with those two swings.

[01:50] Perfect.

[01:52] So, Mark, we've got two swings here. Talk to the audience a little bit about—when you were hitting, you were kind of describing the arm depth and just the amount of turn. So talk about the differences between these two.

[02:08] So, look how high my hands get. This is the better version.

[02:13] Yes.

[02:14] And this is what I would call a "not hit enough shots yet" version. This move requires me to be more warmed up, more ready to go. Because I don’t feel like I’m swinging far enough with my arms at all, right? So it feels like I’m going to be slower.

[02:34] Sure.

[02:35] And this one—even though I’ve not done—this is where Optimotion is so good. I would want this number slightly higher to beat this number. But I’m very happy with how high the hands are on this one.

[02:49] So, this one is lots of arms, decent amount of shoulder—so a lot of everything. This one is decent amount of shoulder, would like a little bit more, but way less with the arms across my body and in turn getting way higher.

[03:06] And it’s these actions that allow me to start peaking my ball speed when I practice. If I train and hit lots of shots trying to send it further, my peak ball speed with this action feels really safe—like I could just knock it down the middle all the time. But I don’t hit the peaks that I hit with this. So, this is out of comfort zone, but it’s what I want to turn into.

[03:33] Yeah. When you’re talking about hitting the ball really far, this is kind of where you’d probably want to be.

[03:40] Yes.

[03:41] What’s interesting here—two-dimensionaly, if you look at it—you can see your trail knee is a lot straighter. Your hips have rotated a lot more over here. Tour average is 88° with shoulder turn at the top of the backswing. These are both really good. This one gives you more potential for energy.

[04:04] These are some of the first swings you’ve made, so obviously, you just haven’t stretched out enough. But you were even describing that when you do this, you get into the mid, even upper 90s with this movement. Whereas over here, you max out at like 91, 92.

[04:20] Yes, absolutely. And with this movement as well, it’s about me really trying to feel like the band is stretched out. My trail shoulder’s really starting to go this way, and I’m really trying to stretch it out.

[04:36] The beauty of having on-the-spot measurements is I can do the movement very wrong, where everything just goes, and then I can just look at a swing and go, “Well hang on, shoulder turn’s up, but hip turn’s massive.” So I’ve got no stretch at all—everything’s just turning.

[04:56] So, it’s that combination between those two ideas that gives me quantified practice, rather than just hitting shots and letting ball flight dictate if I think I’ve made a good move or not.

[05:09] Correct. And that’s the value of measurement data that comes back to you really quick. Especially for you as a coach—being able to see this in real time and go, okay, this is what’s happening. Yes, you hit a great shot there, but you didn’t move the right way. That’s really helpful from a learning perspective to rework movement patterns.

[05:32] Absolutely. And the other thing with this—not only am I quantifying my movement—I’ve got SKYTRAK on the ground. I can quantify direction of shots and ball speeds. So I can see: did I turn how I wanted to? Has ball speed gone up or down? I can quantify at every step.

[05:54] Obviously, I’m lucky—I can kind of do this on my own. I’m a coach. But doing this kind of work with your coaches is just priceless.

[06:04] Yeah. So for everybody watching, what’s the big takeaway from this movement? How could somebody practice this versus the other one?

[06:14] For me, the big difference is trying to keep my hands—from the side-on view—to the right side of my head. Trail side of my head. Because they get buried behind my head.

[06:27] Gotcha.

[06:28] That’s really easy to do if I don’t turn my shoulders. Then what happens is the ball speed drops. So I can do the feeling, but I just don’t turn very much. I do the feeling, hit the ball, and the ball speed’s in the 150s.

[06:45] Well, I might as well do that because I can get it into 160s. But if I want to touch 170, I have to be doing good turn, less arm depth, and good commitment as well.

[06:47] [Music]