Want more distance? You can get it by making these two simple swing adjustments.
The reigning US Open champion had just stepped off a long-haul flight to Australia 30 minutes beforehand when he welcomed us onto the driving range at Grange Golf Club in Adelaide. Standing on some freshly cut turf housed by markers bearing his name and Crushers GC colours, a weary Bryson DeChambeau could have been excused for not being up for much of a chat, let alone a half-hour lesson with Australian Golf Digest editor-in-chief Brad Clifton.
To help break the ice, Clifton asked him what the secret was to generating “Bryson Ball Speed” for those mere mortals at home aspiring for more. DeChambeau immediately set the tone for the day with a trademark quip.
“What’s the secret? Take a break for two weeks and then quit,” he laughed.
“No, in all seriousness, it’s been years of work and a lot of learning from the top guys out on the World Long Drive circuit. What’s really interesting is that over the past couple of years, I’ve learned how to get my adrenaline going, how to suppress it and control it, and leverage it to where I can get some energy out of my golf swing every once in a while.”
With our cameras tracing his every move, DeChambeau literally put on a clinic that only a man with nearly two million YouTube subscribers can do: locking us all in with instruction that was thoughtful, engaging and downright fascinating, that didn’t come without its OH&S procedures.
“I’d say the most important thing for a golfer like yourself, just trying to get a little bit more speed right off the bat is, first off, you want to take precaution in all of this,” he warned. “You’re going to ‘kill’ yourself if you’re not careful. You’ve got to be very careful with this. And what I mean by killing yourself is you’re going to hurt yourself if you’re not careful. You’ve got to get out there and make sure that you’re training properly, working out, get in the gym. But for guys that just want to gain a little bit of speed, I do have a couple of tips that’ll help you tremendously on not only feeling more comfortable over the ball with speed but also seeing some good results.”
Sounds good to us. Let’s go!
1. GIVE YOURSELF MORE ROOM ON BACKSWING
So, one of the key things that I’ve learned, and this actually goes back to my YouTube channel that I have – @BrysonDeChambeau – one of the lessons that I gave on there was how to hit it longer. And the first basic thing for me that I always tell everybody is to make sure that you’re giving yourself this expansion room moving back, a wider arc on the way back. You want to feel like you are swiftly taking it back but widening the arc of your backswing. Don’t try to pick it up quickly. Try taking it back smoothly and a little wider than your current driver swing. Get the feel for this with practice swings and watch how I’m doing it on the video.
2. LOAD UP AT THE TOP (THAT MEANS DON’T RUSH!)
Now, the one piece of advice that I could give everybody today that will help you immediately is give yourself more time at the top. People forget that hitting it far is about having speed at the ball, not at the top of your swing. When you get back to the top, feel like you’re taking your time, and letting yourself just gather and accumulate all this energy so that then you can throw it around the corner through the ball and not from the top. If anything, when I swing at my fastest, I feel like I’m almost slower going to the top and then it explodes back and through the ball. Again, once you get to the top of your backswing, you want to feel like everything’s taking a lot of time while everything’s just loading up there. Everybody mistakes swinging it fast for trying to put a lot of energy into it really quickly. They go whoomph and try to put a lot of speed into it and try to come down and finish the swing in one quick move as fast as they can. It’s actually the opposite. Your goal here is to actually go slower at the top and then whip it through really hard. You want to create the speed through impact, not up at the top.
WATCH THE FULL VIDEO:
QUICK RECAP: Remember – a little bit wider on the way back and give yourself time at the top to let everything load. And then on the downswing, you’re going to want to turn into it, get the left arm into the chest and explode back. That’s the way to get faster ball speed really quickly.
I can’t tell you how long I tried to get 195 miles per hour on my driver swing, and being able to get off a plane and go 195 miles an hour right off the bat is pretty cool. That means that the technique that I built a long time ago has just progressed throughout the course of my career. Even though I’ve focused more on golf, I still have it and I feel like I can just pull it out whenever I want. If you work on this, you’ll have it in the bag when you need it, too.
