Less is often more when it comes to your driver

FRIDAY, JANUARY 25: The average length of a  driver on the PGA Tour is 44¾ inches with a loft of 10.8°. 

Bubba Watson uses a 44½in. driver; Luke Donald uses a 43½in. one.

I see many players that are buying drivers off the shelf at 46in length. 

The misconception is that longer drivers go further. It actually is true but ONLY when a player makes good, solid contact. That’s easier said than done with a driver 46in. long.

When a player plays with a driver that is too long, it encourages poor posture at impact, and what gain they get from the extra length is more than given away because of poor contact. 

If you miss the middle of the clubface, the loss of distance is typically 40 per cent. Furthermore, even if someone gains a few yards in distance, they typically give it back in loss of direction. 

Maybe we should think like the pros and think about distance left to the hole after a drive and not just yardage off the tee box. Like putting, getting a driver that encourages solid, consistent contact will help the player to score.

When I conduct a driver fitting, the spin rate for the player being fitted is often too high. As an instructor, I can see that the driver is often too long for the player and as a result they hang back off their right foot to compensate for a driver that was too long. 

I get them to grip down an inch or two on the driver, which helped them to stay down, make more solid contact, decreasing the spin, which increased the distance. 

A “professional fitter” would not have understood that so they would have undoubtedly changed shafts or the loft of the driver head.

With the huge increase in getting fitted for equipment or wanting to be fit in the future, the next most important question is: who is going to fit you? 

The mistake I see happening is that too many people go to a “professional fitter” who is not a PGA Professional Instructor. 

Fitting is subjective. There is a real art to it, which is instruction. A skilled, experienced teacher can make the determination as to what length club fits a player’s impact posture, what lie angle matches the player’s impact plane and what design features give the player the ball flight, or roll if it was a putter.

If a fitter is just a “fitter”, and not a teacher, they can NOT make those determinations. 

The bottom line is that if a player is going to be fitted for any club in their bag, they should be fit by a teacher. 

If you teach, you can’t teach without fitting golf clubs and if you fit, you can’t fit without teaching.

When someone comes to me for their first lesson, I always look at their equipment first. More times than not, that is where the fault lies. 

Paul Adams is the PGA director of golf at Rosewood Tucker’s Point