8 Clubhead Speed Drills to Help You Hit More Bombs

By
, GolfLink Editor
Updated August 28, 2023
Man hitting driver on a golf course
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    Man hitting driver on a golf course
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There is plenty of data that proves hitting the golf ball farther leads to lower scores. More importantly, perhaps, hitting the ball farther makes golf more fun. If you want to increase your club head speed and gain distance, these are the drills for you.

Use this Drill to Increase Clubhead Speed

For those of you that would like to move your body faster, thereby creating more clubhead speed and longer shots, one of the best ways to do this is through the use of torque. What I mean by torque is that as you make your backswing you turn your upper body but restrict turning with your lower body.

What you will feel is that your upper body makes a full turn while your lower body really resists that turning. This creates a tightness or a stretching or a tautness in your body and makes your body want to unwind much faster. This is very similar to a rubber band, if you hold one end and stretch the other when you let it go it springs back very quickly.

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Tips to Increase Distance in Your Golf Swing

If want more distance, learn how you can make the golf club move faster.

  • Getting your hands on the golf club correctly allows your wrists to hinge properly. Having your hands on there with the right pressure allows the golf clubhead to swing. The hinging of the wrists is responsible for about 50 percent of your total speed potential.
  • We can get your arms to swing on the correct path or the correct arc or the correct circle that is another 25 percent. Both of those things together are 75 percent of your total distance potential.

Chair Drill to Hit the Ball Farther

The X Factor is the differential between the turn on your upper body and the turn on your lower body. That means that the bigger that gap is between the upper body turn and the lower body move, the more power you are going to get. A good way to test this is to sit on top of a chair.

  • We are going to place a shaft on the back part of your neck and from there we are just going to try to leave our hips against the chair and make a full coil.
  • You can see the differential between the hip turn and the upper body coil.
  • As we do that you can see how my shoulders turn about 90 degrees as my lower body is turning probably half of that.

The wrong way to do it would be leaving the chair with the lower body and getting the same amount of turn with the shoulders and the hips. Try this little thing. It will help you to improve your X Factor and hit the ball longer.

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Women's Golf Tips: Increase Swing Speed

Women are always looking for ways to increase their distance. One of the best drills for that is to do a six ball drill called a speed drill.

  • What you do is set up to the first shot and as soon as you are set you hit the ball.
  • You then go on to the next shot and you basically hit all six balls as fast as you can.

This helps my students for a couple of reasons. One it eliminates the time it takes to get set up to the ball, they stop thinking and kind of let it go and it does speed up their swing. It gives them the opportunity to see that when you let it go you can hit great shots. It also helps them add speed and get to a nice full finish.

Improve Lag in your Golf Swing

The only thing that we need for this drill is just a shaft or a club. We are going to turn it upside down and grip it only with the right hand right where the shaft starts.

From that position I am going to get into a normal setup, leave the club a few inches above the ground and I am going to put my left hand on top of my chest.

From that position I am going to get my feet together, make a full coil in my backswing and as you can see my left shoulder is turned behind the ball, I have a beautiful coil from there and the thing that I am going to do now is take a step forward and let the club swing through into my finish.

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Simple Drill to Increase Club Head Speed

Take the club well above the ground, almost up to waist height, take your normal grip and practice swings above the ground. You should hear a swish.

What you have here is no resistance. You can actually start to really get some speed and really pick it up. Plus you will also start to get the rotary motion of your hands, you can not stop it, your club is going to go over so that it really allows your arms to work in a total release fashion.

You can do this with your 9-iron, your 5-iron or your driver; you will get a little different feel.

When you get to your driver you can really make a loud swish and it is a great drill for anyone that is trying to build more speed into their golf swing.

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3 Tips to Gain Driving Distance

Everybody is looking for more distance out of their driver. Here are a couple of things that you can do.

  • The first thing you can do is lengthen out your backswing, even if the club swings past parallel. That is not the worst thing in the world that you can do. The longer the backswing, the more clubhead speed you can generate.
  • The second thing you want to do is create a swishing sound with your hands and arms, swinging back and through, that speeds the club up.
  • The third thing is you want to hit the ball with the back of your left hand. The back of your left hand is square, the clubface is square, solid contact is number one in creating more distance.

An Easy Drill to Get More Power

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If you've been coming over the top, take a club and hold it in front of you with your left hand on the butt of the club and the clubface on the ground. Bend over a little bit, then throw a ball with your right hand under your left arm towards the target.

This will make your shoulders work a little bit more under as you go through, and if you have been swinging your shoulders over the top that might be a good drill for you to try.