The Driver is the most hit club by Rapsodo Mobile Launch Monitor (MLM) users, and it comes as no surprise as everyone loves to hit that perfect high bomb that seems to never land. With that feeling of a perfectly struck drive comes the desire to do it again and want to hit it farther than you ever have.
Not only is it fun to hit it past your buddies but shorter approach shots make the game easier and improve your chances of hitting the ball closer to the hole. Golfers used to be told, “drive for show, putt for dough,” but with the advancement of statistics and analytics, we have discovered that the long ball is more than just bragging rights in your foursome but a scoring advantage against your competitors.
Mark Broadie, the godfather of advanced statistics in golf and the inventor of the Strokes Gained metric has long preached the importance of the long ball. Speaking at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in 2014, Mark spoke to the importance of distance and stated the “long game is the best separator between the best tour pros and average tour pros. The long game explains about two-thirds of scoring.”
The most important metric for increasing distance is ball speed. The faster the ball speed, the more potential the ball has to travel farther. You can increase your ball speed through better contact and/or an increase in club speed. Swing speed training has become common practice in the game today and training for speed with a launch monitor not only elevates intent but offers confirmation on what is or is not working.
“Golfers benefit from the feedback. Even if they are making a mechanical change, they get to associate that mechanical change with an improvement in speed. Maybe it was relacing their grip or making a bigger turn, they’re able to immediately see the results and know that that move produced a faster swing. Training is really important but being able to realize feedback from mechanical changes through a device like the Rapsodo MLM is invaluable.” – Dr. Sasho Mackenzie, sports biomechanist.
Rapsodo Advisor and 2011 PGA Instructor of the Year, Mike Malaska has created the below 3 drills to help you increase club speed. Use a MLM with these drills this winter and you will be swinging the club faster, hitting the ball farther and shooting lower scores come springtime.
Left, Right, Left
The Pull Back
Swing the Handle
