Forgetting the distance problems for a second, if you hit nearly every fairway and you always hit your irons straight, you can be like a scratch golfer without adding a yard of distance to your existing swing, something doesn't add up. I think you need to hold yourself to a higher standard with your assessment of your game, hitting the driver further isn't going to take you from 94 to 74, it *might* take you to 84 but probably not.

And yeah you can practice with your iron game to work on swing changes too since that distance is kinda what I expected you to say, which implies to me that your same lack of distance is present in all your clubs, this isn't really a "driver problem" its a swing problem.

Your driver swing is better than your iron swing.

MAKE YOURSELF finish your backswing. Just tell yourself it's OK to miss the ball or hit grounders until you learn to calmly and with balance finish your backswing, pause for a split second, and bring the club back to square.

That last fifteen percent in the backswing is important.

This thread really reminds me of the threads where people want to play poker for a living but don't have good records of their games and are a little self-deluding about their abilities. OP, I really don't think you have any sense of where you are losing strokes on the golf course other than the notion that your friends hit it past you off the tee.

OP, if you truly hit it straight a vast majority of the time (no one hits it straight 100% of the time) and had the good short game you claim to have, you never would have started this thread because you would be the short hitter who shoots 80 or better by getting up and down over and over and over.

I really think you should try and see how far through the Doc's Ultimate Practice Routine you can get. And start tracking your round. How many fairways are you hitting? How many greens? On missed greens, are you getting up and down? How often? How many putts per round?

I suspect that if you are even close to accurate in your self-assessments about how straight you hit the ball, your best case scenario is going to be that you have multiple holes where you have 2 or 3 shots from within 100 yards to get it on the green and then you almost always 2 putt and sometimes 3 putt. If so, does that sound like someone who needs to work on his driver?

From looking at the 7 iron vid, I think one of the biggest leaks you have is in your stance. DeathDonkey nailed it in saying that you have an "arms swing". You seem to have little to no flex in your knees at address and through the swing, which is bad because you can't get any decent lower body coil in your back swing. I'd work on getting into a more athletic stance with your knees/waist (think a basketball player about to take a free throw, though maybe not quite as much) and then rotating the club around your spine while keeping your left hip square to the target.

EDIT: I'm a high handicap so take this FWIW

Can I just say that when I first started playing 2 years ago, I actually could hit the ball fairly decent. All the distances were what they should be, and then I wanted to get better, started reading different tips, drills etc. Took a lesson, and next thing I know I stopped being able to hit the ball for some reason. I'm sure it was luck at first.

This weekend, I am going to document every shot I take during my round. This will give me a better idea of what I am lacking, and what I need to work on. I worked on my putting all winter to eliminate 3 putts, which I have done a decent job of doing. Around the green I would say I am decent. I do think that if I start documenting my shots, I may find what the real problem is, but I will say there is a huge advantage being 125 out as opposed to being 215 out.

I think I found the the real problem, and after watching my 7 iron video in slow motion, it looks like at impact my hips have yet to turn which is making my right arm collapse. This is robbing me of significant distance, and I would love people to tell me how you learned how to turn your hips. Being a baseball player I got hip rotation from lifting my front leg then exploding through the ball while rotating my hips. As a golfer there isn't that trigger that is getting me to turn my hips. I would love to hear suggestions or drills I could do.

after watching the video i think your swing was actually better than i expected, heh.

yes, you are right, at impact, the ideal position is for your lower body to be facing the target while your head and arms are still down on the ball, with your shaft and left arm in a straight line. takes a lot of flexibility, certainly higher than the average amount. i have found that right now i can't even be in that correct position because my body won't let me.

it's not just hip rotation. the rotation of the lower body, hips, legs, knees, is the actual driving force behind the shot. i had the same problem, my arms were doing all of the work. my hips were rotating, but it was passive, they were rotating because they had to, not because i was rotating them.

it should be the other way around. you rotate your lower body and your arms come with because they don't have anywhere to go.

next time you go to the range, don't even take a full swing. take your pitching wedge, aim for the 50 yard marker, and concentrate on hitting down on the ball without using your arms, only using your lower body rotation.

you will probably shank a bunch of them, you will be hitting it terribly, but keep at it, it takes practice to get used to hitting it a new way. don't worry about what your arms are doing, think only about rotating your lower body and c0cking-unc0cking your wrists.

Went to the range tonight, and amazingly enough I noticed that when I bend my knees I am able to rotate my hips better and was hitting a great distance further both irons and driver. I still have some work to do, but this is a good start.

Dude, if you wanna learn to golf properly, start with dagolfdoc's routine. (Or something similar.) start with putting and chipping-> then short irons -> then long irons -> then driver.. There's no short cuts in golf. Even if you gave each area a couple weeks of its own, you'd be so much further ahead then if you 'went to the range a few times and played in between'. That said, I know it's hard to find a proper practice area in the Boston area.

After reading this thread, I agree with KenoVictory, and I'll say it a bit more bluntly which I rarely do, but I think you're delusional about where you are in golf. Start a new thread 'give a beginner a training program' or something. Do it right. Do things right, and you'll get threre faster. The most enjoyable and rewarding part of golf is getting better.

I bought a new driver, and so far the new specs have helped out tremendously off the tee. All of a sudden instead of finding myself needing a 4I or 3H from the fairway, now I have a PW, 9I, or 8I in my hand.

Bought a Ping G20 9.5 Stiff which is a far cry from my TM Burner Superfast 10.5 Regular, with a cut shaft. Not sure why, could be mental, but I gained at least 40-50 yards off the tee.

Took a lesson the other night. Very eye opening stuff. I had always had my weight on my front leg during back swing. Instructor noticed that I wasn't shifting my weight back and that I was rotating around my back hip as opposed to getting the front hip out of the way and shifting the weight. Amazing results!!!