The first step to success on any given hole is finding the fairway with your drive. Of course, it is possible to make a birdie out of the rough, but when you are in short work, it becomes much easier.
When I was younger, finding freeways was easy. I was confident standing on the tee box and chipping away at the driver. No matter how narrow the fairway – or how many troubles appeared – I KNEW I could hit the ball to my target.
As I’ve gotten older (and longer off the tee), this belief has faded. Whether it’s the result of more club speed or errors in my technique, the result is the same: I’m playing more and more from the fairway.
So last winter GOLF Top 100 Teachers Summit, I enlisted the help of 2025 PGA of America Teacher and Coach of the Year, Jason Baile. Jason is the director of instruction at Jupiter Hills Club and coaches tour pros such as Lucas Glover and Ryan Gerard, each of whom ranks in the top 25 on the PGA Tour in driving accuracy. Under his tutelage, I knew I would learn a thing or two about hitting more fairways.
Watch the video below from our driving accuracy bootcamp to learn more about how to hit your driver straight.
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How to hit the driver straight
When I arrived for my lesson with Jason, he began by asking a simple question: What is my problem? Back then, it was a high, spinning ball that bounced to the right. It’s not a shot that was going to get away from me, but when it did, it left a ton of distance and left me miles from the hole.
After watching me for a few shots, Jason concluded that many of my problems were the result of poor organization.
“I see a bunch of inconsistencies,” he said. “Part of your setup looks like you’re going to fade it. Part of your backstroke looks like you’re going to draw it. And then another part looks like you’re going to fade it.”
As with many problems faced by recreational players, many fixes can come from simple configuration tweaks.
Fixing my configuration
One thing I have always struggled with when hitting the driver is having an angle of attack that is too far DOWN. With a negative attack angle, you’ll put more spin on the ball, which can be great for control, but it also means you’ll have much less power.
Thanks to Jason, I was able to discover that one of the biggest reasons for my negative angle of attack is poor organization. Everything was very “level” and forced me to make allowances later in the move to make up for it.
The first thing he asked me to do was lightly “bump” my hip toward the target at address. This movement slightly raised my lead hip and lowered my trail hip.
“I’d rather see you get the right anime at your address with your lower body than your upper body,” Jason said.
The next thing he fixed was the orientation in my arms at address. Before, I had a tendency to raise my trail arm too high, which covered my lead arm when looking at my swing from down the line. To fix it, he got me thinking about pointing my trailing elbow more into my trailing hip when I grip the stick.
“Now our arms have a bit of a slant,” Jason said.
By correcting these two simple setup mistakes, I immediately increased my angle of attack and got into a better position to make swings that didn’t have as many built-in offsets.
Fixing a bug right
After getting used to my new setup, Jason taught me a simple way to fix the correct error. First, he hit a second ball about a long club behind my ball and just inside my target line. Then he told me that when I swing, I need to feel like I’m getting the clubface square to that ball as quickly as possible.
“I call it ‘Turn 4 at Talladega,'” Jason said. “If the face is open in Turn 4, you’re going to have to twist the steering quite a bit. If I can get the bonnet trim — which is the sweet spot — square on the bow early, then I don’t have to turn the axle at the end.”
Once you begin to visualize the secondary ball in that swing arc, try to feel yourself aligning the clubface with it as quickly as possible. If you can do this, you won’t need to make any compensation through the area of ​​impact. You’ll just have to turn your body and the clubface will be square with your target.
“Any ball that starts too far right, mark it early,” Jason said.
Left error fix
After drilling the feel of the clubface square early to guard against the right miss, I started to overdo things a bit and started missing the ball left. Fortunately, Jason had another easy sense to fix those mistakes as well.
As the clubhead swings through the impact zone, it’s important to feel like the sweet spot is facing up and to the left of your target. By doing this, you will ensure that you do not manipulate the clubface and close it, which results in a hit.
“Every time it hits the ball and spins, the sweet spot points down and away,” Jason said. “As it passes, the sweet spot has to be faced and left because there was no twist in it.”
If you ever start to feel yourself losing the ball to your left, keep that feeling in mind. When you can drive the clubface up and to the left, you’ll never miss the ball left and hit those awkward hooks.
