I get the question a lot. Why don’t you use a driver? I get the question so much, it becomes pretty annoying. To get the answer, look no further than Scottie Scheffler this weekend at the PGA Championship.
Everyone on TV (and off) raves about Scheffler. He is the consensus No. 1 player in the world the past few years. He does things that astound us and defy imagination. He ran away with his third major title this weekend, despite being unable to hit a fairway consistently with his driver. Instead he repeatedly got lucky, bouncing drives off trees and still making pars and birdies.
If he can’t be more consistently on target with a driver, how can I expect to be? Coincidentally, the misses he gets with his driver are the same as mine. He either push-fades it to the right or pulls it straight left. So, I can take some solace in that sense, I am just like Scottie the Great.
I’ve played golf for 40 years and it took me about 30 years to figure out driver has ruined my game for decades.
The big problem is, when I hit a pull drive like Scottie did over and over on the front nine today, I used to think I made a bad swing. I would then get over my next 7-iron shot thinking my bad swing is pulling left, so I better adjust in some way. When the 7-iron shot would fly way right or in some other form off target, I would think I made another bad swing and the fight was on. I would spend the rest of the round playing army golf (left-right, left-right-left) with a head full of swing thoughts, all because of one bad drive.
About three or four years ago, I decided to do a test. I entered the Arctic Valley Open and played the entire 36-hole event hitting nothing more than a 5-iron off the tee. I hit every fairway for two days and that included the Creek Course in Round 2.
Some might say anyone could hit every fairway if they hit a 5-iron, but the successful experiment sparked some new experiments. I went to a tournament in Mesquite Nevada, a net event called the Mesquite Amateur. It’s a three-round event and I teed off with 5-iron in Round 1. I shot 78 and was in fifth place. Round 2, I allowed some fairway woods to enter the mix and shot 86. Round 3, I hit driver all around the course and shot 92. I should note those were my first rounds in eight months with no practice or warm-up prior to any of the rounds.
A few years prior to that, the State Am was at AGC. I only had irons in my bag and shot 77 in the first round. I added woods later and didn’t break 80 in either of the final two rounds.
Logic would say that all means I’m just bad with woods and drivers, but I’m not at all. All my life, I have killed drivers and fairway woods to great success. I’ve even had numerous people tell me they can’t believe how straight and long I drive the ball. So, how did I do that? When I was young and worked at golf courses, I hit at least four buckets of balls per day and played many rounds of golf per week. I knew every club in my bag very well, including driver.
Such an insane amount of practice is not an option for me these days, so for several years, I’ve been wracking my brain to figure out how to play well without practicing. A funny pattern started to surface.
I would go to a course, having not touched a club in a week or more. This was something completely new to me, something I was petrified to do all my life. How could I go tee off without warming up? Inconceivable. So, I would go to the first tee and tee off with a 5-iron and put it perfectly on target almost every time. No warm-up, no practice, just swinging away like riding a bike and boom, right on the money.
I would even play so well for the first five holes or so, I swore off the range altogether. One day, I birdied the first three holes at the Creek without hardly a practice swing. There was no need for practice or warm-up before a round. Golf was easy.
Then, a par-5 would arrive, like No. 6 at AGC or Settlers. I would pull out the driver, full of confidence, feeling loose and limber. I would aim the driver down the right side of the fairway, expecting a draw like every shot I had hit so far and instead get a push fade out of bounds. The rest of the day was done for. I was rattled and unable to get anything on target again.
I’ve taken lessons and read books to try to correct swing flaws that may be preventing me from hitting it well with my entire bag. I looked for swing mechanics that made it impossible to hit the ball crooked. The education worked and culminated with a great round one day in the Palmer Invitational. I shot 73, using a driver all day and hitting every fairway. I drove home that day vowing to quit golf if that was the correct way to play. It was no fun.
The swing changes I made allowed me to hit the ball straight with every club, but I lost all connection with the target. I was down the fairway and on the green, but never hit a shot that really made my day.
The next day, I went back to hitting the ball my way, shot 84, but left the course in a much better mood.
The joy of golf is in hitting targets, looking up and seeing the ball flying magically, right where you intended. The joy doesn’t come from a number on a scorecard. I shot a 90 in the qualifying round of the state match play event last year and left the course with the biggest smile, because so many shots were absolute bulls eyes. The next day I shot 73 with the only change being a course softened by rain.
Last Wednesday, I played my fourth round of the year. My persimmon 3-wood I had been teeing off with was falling apart, so I brought a hybrid to use off the tee. I couldn’t even make contact with the face of the club until the 10th hole. The only reason I could come up with for this was the drastic difference in the swing-weight of the club compared to my persimmon 3-wood. I’ve gotten used to the heavy persimmon with a steel shaft over the past few rounds and the switch to a graphite shaft with a light weight club head was too much of a transition.
The funny thing was, my irons were on the money right out of the gate. For example, I duffed three straight shots with the hybrid on the par-5 third hole. I was 200 yard out for my fourth shot and hit the most beautiful 5-iron you ever saw. I nearly made the resulting 10-footer for par.
I continued in that same vein to the end of the front nine, nearly acing my shot at the par-3 ninth. On the 10th tee, I made an adjustment to my swing for the first time. I tried a little more upright takeaway with the hybrid and boom, a much better shot. On the 11th tee, better still. My next two approach shots missed wildly to the right and it was clear to me the adjustment to the hybrid ruined my iron shots.
In the old days, I would just go to the range and hit 50 or 100 hybrids to get a groove going with that club. I would probably hit a dozen or so shots with all the other clubs too. Then, my next round, I would make subtle adjustments to each club back and forth and play a decent round. My solution these days: the hybrid goes back in the closet. I don’t have time to fiddle around.
When I read stories of Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, and Jack Nicklaus, I read about players who striped drives down the narrowest of fairways. I heard a story once about Lee Trevino showing up to a U.S. Open qualifying round with one ball in his bag. He knew he wouldn’t ever lose a ball. Now we have Scheffler spraying drives that would corrupt any round at the Creek and Bryson DeChambeau missing every fairway in his victorious final round last summer at the U.S. Open.
The modern driver is such a mess, they are now selling mini-drivers. I even saw a few guys using those at the PGA Championship this weekend. There would be no need to invent a mini-driver if the regular driver worked.
As an old friend of mine once said, “I can use a driver or I can enjoy golf.”
I’ll be going back to a bag full of irons for my fifth round of the year on Wednesday.
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