Padraig Harrington BUSTS Golf’s BIGGEST MYTHS with the Driver Swing

Padraig Harrington busts the biggest myths about the driver swing in golf – keeping your head down, rotating your body vs arms, taking the club back slowly, and lifting up for more power.

We’re here at the Grand Cypress Golf Club in Orlando, Florida. And I am delighted to be joined by threetime major champion Podrick Harrington, six-time RDER Cup player. You’re a terrific driver of the golf ball. And I know in this driver special, you want to debunk some swing myths. So, let’s get right to it. Yeah. Look, this is what I see when I play every week at the ProAm, my amateurs, what I see going wrong. One, don’t try and stay still. This is the worst thing you could try and do. Somebody who tries to stay still in in the golf swing will actually probably go forwards as they go back. And when they try and hit it, they’ll be going backwards. Don’t try and keep your head down. If your head goes down, it’s going to get in the way. Terrible idea. Let your head float in the golf swing. You wouldn’t try and keep your head still if you were swinging a a baseball bat. You wouldn’t keep your head still if you were throwing a punch. Why would you keep your head still playing golf? Okay. Next thing is professional golfers actually swing the club back three times faster than amateurs. So, the rhythm of the back swing really helps the club set. You don’t go real slow. This isn’t going to help you. So, a nice rhythm in the back swing. Allow your head float. Don’t try and stay still. Don’t keep your head down. And lastly, don’t lift in the back swing. People always want to make a bigger back swing. They think that’s going to equate to more power. That’s okay if you’re supple, but if you get to a point in your back swing where you you’ve you’ve got a tight coil, don’t lift past that. The minute you lift your arms and your body stretches like this, you’re going to lose all your power and your accuracy. So, you got to stay within yourself. And what you will see, especially with pros when they’re taking practice swings in a in a static environment without the ball, they only ever swing about that long. They don’t make a big swing in the back swing because we don’t want any of this lifting. Okay? So, nice and tight in the back swing. Good bit of rhythm. And I would recommend to people at home in their garage during the winter, you know, years ago if you were watching Hogan, they had lovely waggling going on. Their feet were were dancing. They were moving and they hit that back swing with speed and that got the club lovely to hinge up here on plane. They got a lovely wrist because of the speed of the back swing. So get that nice rhythm going. Allow yourself move. Essentially, as you turn, your turn shifts your weight. And as you can see, it shifts my head a little bit to this side. I don’t need to move my hips over here. I just need to turn my body. And once my body turns, you can see I’m going to that is actually going to turn into a full golf swing when the golf ball is there. See how it gets to parallel when when you’re doing that, Podrick. I mean, certainly I love the idea of the movement. No question. Are you still mindful of keeping the eyes somewhat on the back of the ball, though? Absolutely. Like all sports, it’s a good idea to look at the golf ball, but it doesn’t mean you need to keep your head still. I can still see the golf ball as I move my head. It floats, but it’s the same as, as I said, if you were hitting a tennis ball, you wouldn’t try and keep your head still. If you were hitting a hockey puck, you’d still see the ball, but you wouldn’t keep your head still. We don’t want it that fixture there. It will actually hurt your neck. It will hurt your back if you try and keep it still. anybody well sorry some people who suffer from a bad back playing in golf it’s because they try and stay still and they tilt forward and get jammed up here in the down swing. We always want to have that big follow through. But you know if you’re getting a bit older that’s going to put a lot of strain on you. So do as Gary Player does. And Gary Player without doubt in this world poundforpound if you take into account his age is the best ball striker that’s ever been in the game. Gary Player’s favorite drill when he’s on the range, if he hits it and he steps over that left leg, that’s to take the pressure off his follow through. We want that big follow through. So, I’m going to copy Gary Player here. Okay, you’ll see a nice bit of movement in the back swing [Music] and I step after it. That takes the pressure off my back. Oh, let let’s see that one more time. I love that. And then I have got one question. And I know that uh someone who influenced you greatly with your game was the late great Bob Torrance. And you told me earlier that he talked about squashing the bug on the down swing. Perhaps not something you think of now, but you certainly did, didn’t you? Oh, no doubt about it. We’re we’re looking old school here. And in fairness, there’s kind of two things that well, three things that happen in the golf swing and the down swing. So, we’ve made that nice brisk back swing. We cocked our wrists. We’re up there. We want to get into our left side. So, as you say, you’re squashing. Are we allowed to say that these days? We’re squeezing a ball under our left foot. We’re not killing any little B. So, we’re squeezing a ball. We’re pressing down our left heel into our left side. That’s your start of the down swing. Sitting in there, pressing down. And this is why I said Nicholas was so good. He had that high foot and he jammed it back down into the ground. From there, your body, your hips and your body rotate. But this is one of the modern differences in golf that I think has changed maybe from Hogan’s time. So as everything is turning, we don’t want rotation in our arms. We actually want our arms going as hard as they can down. So our shoulders and our arms go down while our body’s rotating. So the speed comes, and this is why you see the likes of Bubba Watson, the likes of DJ Johnson, why they’re so long is they’re up here. And that means their arms come down very quickly. They’ve got JB Holmes. He gets his arms up and they come flying down. That’s not rotation. Yes, the body’s rotating, but the arms are down as hard as you can. I think years ago, rotation, too much rotation wouldn’t be a good thing. We’ve got to keep that arm speed up. Okay, [Music] that was absolutely wonderful. Another smasher down the fairway. Love it.