Graham Averill will turn 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’s a 13 handicap attempting to reach scratch in a year. Welcome to his midlife crisis.
The big stick. The big dog. Thor’s Hammer. … The driver has many nicknames but I’ve always just called it “trouble.” When I played golf as a teenager, I didn’t even carry one in my bag because I didn’t want to be tempted to pull it out. It was an automatic penalty so I just poked a 3- iron down the fairway and got on with it. The owners of the houses that lined the fairways of my childhood courses all breathed a sigh of relief.
I’ve grown to understand a few key aspects of life as I’ve navigated adulthood. As I’ve aged, I’ve learned that roulette is for suckers and my wife is right even when she’s wrong. But the driver has remained an enigma. Sure, there will be brief windows of greatness with the big stick where I’ll mash a beautiful long draw that finds a fairway two or three holes in a single round! But mostly I overcook that draw into a hook that disappears deep into the poison ivy-laden woods. Fearful of that snap hook, my swing became cautious and tense which resulted in more snap hooks. It was a vicious cycle.
I have this debate with other golfers all the time: Would you rather hit every fairway for the rest of your life or never three-putt again?
I know the scoring happens the closer you get to the hole but I’ll take clean fairways all day. It’s demoralizing to start every par-4 or par-5 with an automatic penalty. And balls are expensive. I’m tired of losing them.
So, my coach Sam Hahn and I have been working diligently to address the biggest liability in my bag. We’ve made some massive improvements in the last few weeks, mostly by trying to turn my draw into a fade.
“Nothing kills a score like a snap hook,” Hahn says. “Yes, draws tend to travel further than fades but the miss with a draw is really unforgiving. The fade that turns into a slice usually won’t get you into as much trouble. There’s a reason why most tour players play a fade off the tee box.”
I have a fragile ego, so I was reluctant to sacrifice any yardage off the tee box, but minimizing the damage from a miss was too enticing to overlook, so I got to work on developing a fade.
Most of the adjustments Sam has me incorporating have been focused on my setup. The hundreds and hundreds of hooks off the tee have conditioned me to that shot shape so I tend to stand very closed in relation to my target. Sam wants me to open my stance and pick a start line down the left side of the fairway while also moving the ball forward in my stance so that contact is made just after the low point of my swing. This move essentially creates an outside-to-in swing path at the point of contact. Combine the ball position with a club face that is more open at address and the set up should help promote a fade. But because I’m an over-achiever, I skipped the fade altogether and developed a wicked slice.
After tinkering with the various elements of the setup, I’ve been able to find the ideal ball position and club face position that produces a tee shot that does the craziest thing—flies straight. Obviously, it took more than just adjusting my setup. I hit buckets and buckets of balls with slow-motion swings, essentially chipping the ball into the range and playing with various parts of the motion and watching the response from the ball. It wasn’t sexy work but I learned a lot about my driver swing. The toughest aspect of all of this work has been trusting that the ball is going to fly straight on the course and choosing a start line based on that ball flight. I’ve been drawing and hooking the ball for so long that I feel really exposed when I’m aiming straight down the middle of the fairway with a stance that isn’t closed.
But I’m learning to trust myself and it’s paying off on the course. I’m hitting an unusually high rate of fairways for someone with my handicap and I have the data to prove it. I’ve been tracking every round with a variety of devices (more on that in a future article) and I’ve watched as my driver has transformed from a liability into an asset. Before I changed my setup, I was losing an average of 2.5 strokes per nine-hole round with my driver compared to a scratch golfer. That has dropped to 1.3 strokes per round in the last week and yesterday I played nine holes where I hit every fairway and lost 0.0 strokes to a scratch golfer off the tee.
I know the work isn’t done. Golf is fickle and success is fleeting. And while I’m hitting the ball straight, I’m not hitting it that far compared to my other clubs. According to the data I’m tracking, I’m averaging 272-278 yards with my driver. Based on how far I hit my irons, Sam thinks I have the potential for more distance so he wants me to make some further adjustments in my setup that could unlock some extra yardage. We’ll see. I’m happy to tinker and experiment. That’s what this project is about. But, for now, I’m going to bask in the new love I have for my driver and it has for me.
Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50 about Graham’s more focused approach to practicing.
