Graham Averill has turned 50 this year and he’s freaking out. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he’s decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He started this project as a 13 handicap attempting to reach scratch in a year. He is now a 9.9. Welcome to his midlife crisis.
I play a lot of golf with my 17-year-old son who is arguably more obsessed with the game than I am. The other day, we were playing at the country club where he works and I hit a snap hook with my driver that curved hard between two houses. We paused and waited for the sound of broken glass or screaming children. Or both. When it was all quiet, my son looked me in the eye and said, “I can’t wait for you to figure out your driver.”
In general, I’m getting better at golf. I’ve settled in with a new putting stroke and I’m more confident than ever on the greens. Sinking some six-footers will do that. I’m striking my irons well and my short game has become an asset. According to the stats I’m tracking on Arccos, get me within 50 yards of the green with a wedge in my hand and I’m playing like a scratch golfer. And there are days when my driver is a weapon and I find fairways like squirrels find nuts. But there are also days when I have a two-way miss and anyone living within 200 yards of the fairway is in imminent danger.
And even on the good days where I’m finding a lot of fairways, my distance caps out around 250-260. If I thought that distance was my ceiling, I’d probably be OK with it and move on, but after tracking swing speeds on a variety of different simulators, I know there’s something off with my driver swing. I’m swinging my irons at 90 mph but I’m swinging my driver 99.
I don’t understand how I can hit a 7-iron 180 yards and a 5-iron 200-210 but I’m hitting my driver 250. The math is off. Switching clubs has helped. I’m getting more distance out of my driver but my swing speed is still slow.
There are two common ways most golfers chase more speed. One option is to hit the gym, doing plyometrics, core work, squats and some rotational movements trying to strengthen the muscles that drive your swing. The other option is to use a speed trainer where you follow a specific program and gradually work through sticks with different weights.
My social media algorithm is dominated by people trying to sell me a swing speed cure that falls into one of those two categories.
But I don’t think my lack of swing speed with the driver is the problem. I think my slow swing speed is a symptom of the problem. I think there’s an issue with my driver swing that’s causing me to swing the big stick slower.
My coach, Sam Hahn, agrees. I had the chance to spend an afternoon playing with him in person and we spent a lot of time on the course and in his golf simulator addressing my driver swing issues.
For whatever reason, I carry a lot of tension into the tee box. I am stiff and rigid. Instead of letting it rip and swinging free, which is how I approach most other shots on the course, I try to guide the ball safely into the fairway.
The result is less than optimal. I have a really short backswing, no real release of the clubhead and no follow-through. Oh, and I do a terrible job of transferring weight throughout the swing.
When you write down all of the problems like that, it can seem overwhelming, but Sam worked me through some simple changes that are starting to yield big results.
First, he wants me to bump my lead hip towards the target at address and lower my back shoulder slightly. Next, he’s having me introduce a slight hinge of the wrists at the top of my backswing. I had zero hinge before and he thinks that hinge at the top of the swing will actually promote more of a release at the bottom of the swing.
My biggest issue is weight transfer. I tend to get stuck with my weight on my back foot. The goal is to feel like I’m launching off my front foot when the clubhead meets the ball. In order to get my weight transferred on time, Sam is having me do a drill where I walk out of the swing like I’m following the ball into the fairway.
It sounds like a lot but the impacts of these changes were immediate while working through them on his home simulator. Instantaneously, I felt like I was whipping the driver through the ball and I went from swinging the driver at 100 mph on his Trackman to 108. And I wasn’t even trying to swing harder. I just cleaned up some mechanics.
I need to spend some time grooving in these changes on the driving range. Shutting the face at impact is a little more difficult with the hinge at the top of my backswing and it’ll take some time to trust these new moves on the course. I played 18 today and the driving was good … until it wasn’t.
I hit some great drives with a distance that topped out at 293 yards. I found a lot of fairways on the front nine but fell apart a bit on the back and collected a few penalties off the tee as the tension resurfaced and I started trying to guide the ball into the fairway again.
I didn’t expect to fix my driver overnight. I don’t care what the influencers on social media tell you; that’s not the way golf works. At least not for me. It takes time and patience and lots of work. But for the first time since picking up golf again, I can see a future where I walk up to the tee and let it rip.
Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50 where Graham plays with his coach in person and learns how to aim the ball.
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