How to Hit a Driver

There is one idea that separates hitting a driver well from hitting everything else well, and almost nobody explains it to beginners before they get to the first tee.

With every other club in the bag, you hit down on the ball. The ball sits on the ground, you strike it first and the turf afterwards, and that descending blow is what launches an iron shot. With the driver, the ball sits on a tee in the air, and you want to hit it on the way up.

Everything below follows from that single difference. Get your setup arranged so that an upward strike is possible, and the driver becomes the easiest club in the bag to hit a long way. Set up the way you do for a 7-iron and you will top it, slice it, or take a divot with a club that was never meant to touch the ground.

Why the driver is different

A driver has very little loft — typically 9 to 12 degrees, against about 34 for a 7-iron. Loft is what launches the ball, so with so little of it the club needs help from somewhere else.

That help comes from the angle of attack. If the clubhead is traveling slightly upward when it meets the ball, the ball launches higher and with less backspin, which is the combination that produces distance. If the clubhead is traveling downward, you get a low launch with high spin, and the ball climbs, stalls and drops.

This is also why the driver head is so large and sits on a long shaft: it is built to be swung at maximum speed at a ball suspended in the air. It is not built to be dug out of the turf. Our clubs explained guide covers how loft works across the whole set.

The five setup points

1. Tee it high

Roughly half the ball should sit above the crown of the driver when the club is resting on the ground behind it. This will feel absurdly high the first time. It is correct.

Teeing low is the single most common beginner error with a driver, because it feels safer — a low ball looks easier to hit. In practice it forces you to swing down to reach it, which is exactly the wrong motion. A longer tee is worth buying; our golf tees page covers the lengths that suit a modern driver head.

2. Widen your stance

Slightly wider than shoulder-width. The driver swing is the biggest one you make, and a wider base keeps you balanced through it. If you are falling forward or backward at the finish, your stance is probably too narrow.

3. Ball forward

Opposite the inside of your lead heel — the left heel for a right-hander. The clubhead reaches its lowest point roughly opposite the middle of your chest, so placing the ball ahead of that point means the club is already traveling upward when it arrives.

4. Tilt away from the target

Let your trail shoulder drop so it sits lower than your lead shoulder, which puts your head behind the ball. An easy way to find this: take your normal stance, then slide your lead hand a couple of inches down the grip relative to your trail hand and let your body follow.

This tilt is what physically permits an upward strike. Without it, no amount of thinking about hitting up will produce it.

5. Swing up, and finish balanced

Make a full, unhurried swing. The tempo point matters more than it sounds: the driver is where beginners try hardest, and trying hard almost always means rushing the transition from backswing to downswing, which throws the club off plane.

The check is simple. If you take a divot with your driver, your setup is wrong. If you finish in balance with your weight on your lead foot and can hold the position for three seconds, your tempo is about right.

The three misses, and what causes them

Topping it. The ball skitters along the ground. Almost always a setup problem: teed too low, ball too far back, no tilt. Fix those three before you consider anything else. Our topping guide covers the wider version of this fault.

Slicing it. The ball curves hard right (for a right-hander). Caused by the clubface being open relative to the swing path. The most common hidden cause is alignment: many golfers aim well right of target without knowing it, then swing across the ball to bring it back. Our slice guide works through the whole thing.

Popping it up.The ball goes almost straight up and lands forty yards away, often with a scuff mark on the top of the driver. This is a steep, downward strike on a high tee — the opposite of the problem you are trying to solve. Widen your stance, slow the transition down, and let the swing be flatter and rounder rather than up and down.

How hard should you swing?

Less hard than you want to. This is the least welcome advice in golf and the most reliably useful.

Distance comes from clubhead speed, but only when the strike is central. A ball struck off the toe of the driver at maximum effort travels shorter than a centered strike at eighty percent effort, and it goes sideways as well. Swinging within yourself dramatically improves your chances of finding the middle of the face.

A practical calibration: on the range, hit five drivers at what feels like seventy percent effort and five at full effort, and compare where they finish. Most beginners find the seventy percent group is longer on average and far tighter. That is the swing to take to the course.

When to leave the driver in the bag

There is no rule requiring you to hit a driver, and there are good reasons not to.

On a narrow hole, on a hole with water down one side, or on any hole where a big miss costs you two shots rather than one, a fairway wood or a hybrid off the tee is often the better play. You give up twenty or thirty yards and you dramatically increase your chances of playing your second shot from grass.

Plenty of beginners score better without a driver at all for their first season, and our driver versus hybrid guidemakes that case properly. Using the driver on the wide holes and something else on the tight ones is not timidity — it is course management, and it is how good golfers think.