Tommy Fleetwood is one of the best drivers of the golf ball in the professional game.
Fleetwood‘s imperious driving played a key role in his first ever PGA Tour win at the Tour Championship back in August.
The 34-year-old is a seasoned winner on the DP World Tour and he has played his part in three successful European Ryder Cup teams.
So who better to pick up some golf tips from than the popular Englishman?
Amateur golfers can learn so much from Fleetwood when it comes to how to improve their ball-striking ability.
Fleetwood’s elite driving and iron play could see him challenge Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy next season.
However, in the here and now, let’s just sit back and soak up some of the Englishman’s wisdom regarding how to improve our driving.
Tommy Fleetwood on the mistake he sees amateurs make with the driver
Fleetwood is incredibly consistent with his driver. He’s longer than average and straighter than most off the tee – quite the combo!
During an appearance on Rick Shiels’ YouTube channel, Fleetwood shared the mistake he constantly sees so many amateur golfers making when hitting their driver.
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He said: “So what the driver is, it’s the only club in the bag that you hit up on in a sweeping motion. What a lot of the amateur players do that I see, is that they don’t sweep up on their driver. They peg the ball up high, low, whatever it is, but they focus so much on making contact with the ball, they hit down on the ball. That results in a spinny, cutty, slicey drive.
“There’s a few tips for what I do and what other Tour players do, specifically we would call it we are working on our attack angle.
“What we do, simply is, there are certain things. The ball position plays a vital part, knowing where that is.
“You could take your right foot back, you could think about your head staying behind the ball and being centered, creating the upsweep motion, rather than getting on top of it.“
Tommy Fleetwood’s best tip to hit longer and straighter drives
The beauty of the drill that Fleetwood shares here is that it is so simple, yet incredibly effective.
He said: “One of the things I really like to do is I like to use a tee in the ground. This is going to create something that is going to be a task for you to miss.
“So I put a tee in front of the ball and what I’m going to do is try and miss the tee. If I was going to hit down on this, obviously I would hit the ball, the driver would hit the tee, meaning that I’ve hit down.
“To miss it, clearly I’m going to have to sweep up, the driver is going to come in higher than the tee and that is going to create a nice sweeping motion which will hopefully hit the ball higher, a bit of a straighter flight and you’re going to hit it longer as well.“
There is absolutely no excuse not to try this on the driving range, if you are someone who hits down on their driver with a steep, over-the-top motion.
As Fleetwood said, if you follow his tip, you should start hitting your driver longer and straighter in no time.
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