How to beat the driver on the deck, according to the big winner – and how not to do it
The DOD.
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Padraig Harrington says he’s 276 yards, the layoff is 240, and there’s a breeze. Looks like the DOD is watching him.
Call it deck time, right? Time to pull the head cover off the 1 wood, right?
Maybe on a practice day, said the three-time winner. You have anxiety.
Harrington speaks in a video recently posted to the PGA Tour Champions social media feed — which you can watch in full here — and he’s part of it. He is equally happy playing as he is teaching, and the subject is one of golf’s most daring images. The driver is designed primarily for tee shots, but, if done rightplaying it away from the tee box can give the player more pop.
If done righthowever, and Harrington said there is a tendency to make at least this error:
“If anything,” he said in the video, “you don’t want to help the driver up because you’re going to get behind him and hit him fat and hit him hard.”
That said, the DOD is a hoot, though, and provided a video, with these tips:
— “If anything,” he said, “I will try to pull my driver a little;
— “Go up a little;
– “But I’m not going to keep the face – I’m going to keep the face square so it doesn’t cut too much.”
At this point in the video. Harrington played the shot. “Pull it a little,” he reminded himself before the stroke. “Okay, so it’s a little over.”
He hit. He said it was good, although he said he “backed off a little.”
“There’s also the problem when you hit the driver on the deck — you’re always eager to get it up in the air and if you’re doing a hang-back it’s hard to get a good strike,” he said. video. “Obviously if you can, go ahead and cover us; that’s what you’re trying to do. It ended up being a great shot – into point blank range on the left.
“I got 270 out of it, in the cold air, but I don’t do that in a tournament.”
Let’s keep the DOD conversation going. In 2022, GOLF.com’s Jessica Marksbury wrote an article titled “4 Keys to Hitting a Driver on Deck,” and you can read that article by clicking here, or by scrolling below.
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Let’s face it – we can all use some distance, not only, but once we hit the fairway.
But many of us leave the longest club in our bag — the driver — aside when faced with a long fairway or second shot on a par-5.
As it turns out, hitting a driver on the deck is easier than you think, and GOLFTEC coach Brad Thorberg — with help from PGA Tour player Jim Knous — has the keys you need to succeed.
How to beat the driver on the deck
1. Set up as you would a 3-wood.
2. Consider using a downward or flat angle – this is different from the normal swing you use when hitting a driver off the tee.
3. Return the ball to your position slightly, so that it lines up with the inside of the heel of your lead foot.
4. Squeeze the club – about one inch – and step closer to the ball. This will straighten the shaft and move the toe of the club down, making it level.
You can expect to have a lower ball flight using a driver off the deck than you would with the ball off the tee, Knous said, and for a right-handed player, the ball may want to work a little more to the right, therefore. be sure to plan for that.
Finally, the driver from the deck works best when you have a lot of space in front of you to run the ball up. Try it, and enjoy the results.
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