I'm struggling with the driver for years... slices, hooks, pulls, pushes, anything from 200-280yrds total... day-dependent. Some days driver only went straight and long, next day I couldn't hit a single fairway... I finally had a lesson with a pro and TrackMan to get some numbers. SS is around 102mph (which should be fine for a nearly 50y old fart), but my AoA was between -8° and -9° (with a resulting backspin of around 6000!), even though I never had any divots with the driver and the impression I actually was hitting up...
Changes we made:
- ball further forward, somewhere between heel and toe of leading foot
- slightly higher tee hight
- lead foot flared out and slightly open stance
- slight side spine tilt away from target
I still need to figure out the exact amounts of ball forward, spine tilt, open stance, ... and ingrain them, but in that single lesson I went to an AoA of +2°-+3° (reducing spin to around 2500). The last 20 drives with that setup had a pretty consistent total of around 270yrds and went either dead straight or hooked a little bit.
My findings so far:
- to much spine tilt will result in hooks, no spine tilt will give you slices
- the more the ball is forward in stance (towards toe), the more upwards I can hit, but it gets more difficult (at least for me)
- you have to maintain the spine tilt throughout the whole swing (which feels really awkward, like swinging extremely in-to-out)
I can't tell if the changes mentioned can apply to anybody (I doubt so), but at least it seems to work for me. As mentioned above, I still have to fiddle around with the parameters, but at least this gives me some promising direction what to work on. If this helps you: Great! If not: Forget about anything I just wrote ;)
