What Makes AARON RAI One of the STRAIGHTEST Drivers on Tour

😃 Want Personal Coaching from us? Click here 👉 https://meandmygolf.com/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Description&utm_campaign=15_11_25

PGA Tour player Aaron Rai is known as one of the most accurate and consistent drivers in the world – and in this video, he joins Andy and Piers to share exactly how he does it.

Aaron breaks down the key technical moves he focuses on and how he balances control and creativity off the tee. You’ll learn how to think like a Tour player when it comes to shaping shots, finding fairways, and building confidence with your driver.

You’ll see:
✅ Aaron’s keys to driving accuracy
✅ How he shapes his shots with purpose
✅ The mindset that keeps him consistent under pressure

🏫 To Attend our Exclusive, in-person, 2 Day Golf Schools at The Grand click here 👉https://meandmygolf.com/golf-schools/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Description&utm_campaign=CHANGETODATE

⛳️ Check out our range of Training Aid products here 🏌️‍♂️👉https://bit.ly/48xyx0z

📱 Get $500 off the Full Swing KIT Launch Monitor when you use code: MEANDMYGOLFKIT 👉https://www.fullswinggolf.com/mmg-landing-page/

Come visit our “Home Club” 👉 https://www.fairmont.com/san-diego/golf/the-grand-golf-club/

Okay, Aaron, welcome. It’s good to have you here. The We want to talk about your driving. Obviously, it’s a bit of a super weapon of yours. Now, statistically, you are one of the straightest hitters in the world, but you’re actually not very straight. And what we mean by that is that yes, you hit a lot of fairways, but in no means do you actually hit the golf ball very straight. There’s a lot of shape and a lot of different types of shots that you like to hit. And we’d love to talk about that today and share that with the with the viewers of how you really use this club and what makes you so good with it. Now, the crazy thing is is you don’t actually practice that much with this club, do you? And yet, you’re the one of the straightest hitters in the world. Let’s kick off just you hitting a shot and then we’ll dive into some of the the technical stuff that that really makes you tick with this club. There we go. Pretty much on it. Very nice. Very nice. Lovely. So, let’s um let’s talk through Aaron and and let’s demonstrate for the viewers really what what are the key things in your golf swing um for you that that help you have so much control with the driver. If you can just talk through and just demonstrate what are the what are the key things that that make you tick. I think firstly it starts with setup. um good alignment, good ball position, um and just regular calibrations in practice and um again in warm-ups as well before tournament rounds. I think the fundamentals in pretty much every part of the game are are the most important things. Um once those things feel good, feeling very strong and balanced etc. um and then there are a couple of key feelings in the swing which um which I’ve tried to feel for a long time and I think in that sense my swing hasn’t changed a huge amount from um when I would have in my early years of starting the game. Um so I think a lot of the key feels are actually pretty constant. I’m sure the swing has changed look but a lot of the key fields have have stayed pretty constant. So I think that continuity um has been important and really trying to stay on top of the fundamentals um is a big part of it I feel. Just just show us in terms of your setup there. You talk about balance and you talk about sort of getting things in a great foundation. Can you just show us some of the key things that are important for you? So usually behind the ball I have um an alignment stick. Uh we’ll get them out. We’ll get them out. We got them here. Okay, perfect. Let’s get it there. We got plenty of We got plenty of footage. This is what we’ve taken over here. Got about a thousand videos of our own standing on an alignment stick. So, pretty much before pretty much before every single shot that I play in practice, I’ll stand on on this alignment stick to check my balance, make sure that it’s running through the middle of my feet. Um, check my stance width is is kind of correct for what a a normal drive should be. Um, and then just start off with a couple of rehearsals in the back swing. um which which feels an important kind of tone to set the swing off in in the right way. We’ve even measured it over the years as well, haven’t we? We’ve had the in fact the some of the tape went off the stick last week for the first time in about 5 years. Aaron’s had his alignment sticks for 20 years. So So this here now just just creates a a heightened awareness of really balance for you in the feet. Exactly. It gives me awareness to know that if I’ve gone a little bit toesy, I feel like more of my weight is this way of the alignment stick. And vice versa, if the weight starts to shift towards the heels, I feel like um yeah, I’m kind of falling back off the alignment stick. So, just getting my stance width in and just really feeling like my feet are kind of running 50/50 along this alignment stick. And you will you will sort of move back and forwards to sort of find that and almost to go look there’s heels, there’s toes, where’s the middle? you sort of search for that middle ground. Exactly. I think um it’s easier to feel kind of both sides of the middle line to then know where that middle line is. Um I think with the amount of practice that a lot of players do, it’s very easy to get into habits you don’t even realize. Um so I think if I was to go in and try and feel middle of my feet, the middle of my feet might feel like they change over time if I’ve tended towards my toes or my heels. So, um, kind of doing that little rocking motion forwards and backwards just helps me feel, okay, what’s toes, what’s heels, the midline is somewhere in between. Yeah. Just reminding yourself of where you don’t want to be. And that’s that helps you find the middle ground, doesn’t it? Exactly. You mentioned um this sort of short rehearsal. Well, can you can you jump on that alignment stick for us and talk talk us through this sort of mini rehearsal that you do cuz it’s been a key it’s been a key thing in your let’s say practice off the golf ball for quite a while and it’s even changed and it’s modified a little bit more recently. Just demonstrate that for us and talk through what are the key things when you do this. So once I feel good with the setup, once I feel nice and balanced and strong, I almost just take a half swing rehearsal to around here on the way back. And it just helps me to feel like everything is is moving together. The club and the body feel like they’re nice and in sync. The club face feels pretty strong, which then really allows me to kind of rotate on the way through. So that drill is more just a feeling of sequencing the body correctly but feeling like everything is is in sync um which for me helps with being able to play the different shapes and being able to control ball flight and line. So just you getting off started off in the right way is has a knock-on effect in the golf swing. Just demonstrate that again for us actually because I think we’ll just just just to show the viewers on this. This is couple of really interesting points here. If you go to that back swing for us, what we’ll notice when Aaron does this is that as he swings back, look how much the the upper body’s turned by this point. The upper body’s turned a lot. And look at that club face. This is one of the key things that helps Aaron. That club face is nice and strong and it’s still pointing, let’s say, at the microphone here. And this is a this connection for you is is really important here, isn’t it? This chest and and club working together. I think when when the swing starts off in a sequence for me which is very body dominated, it’s a good cue for the body to keep working as the club moves past it to the top of the swing which then really helps the body to work and sequence well coming down. Um which I think is good for for speed, but it’s uh it’s good for accuracy and and stability of the face. Yeah, we know we know from history from you as soon as any independent motion comes in of this it’s M it loses your control of the club face, but you know that you’ve got control of that. As soon as we get to even just a little bit of wrist in that move away just changes things quite considerably, doesn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. Should we go into some shots? Should we actually go into a little bit of the the superpower part now? I think we got a good idea, the nonstraight shots. So, we know that, and this is something that’s really interesting for you guys watching this, that when if ever you’re on the range and you hit a few shots, like two or three shots, and there’s no purpose to those shots, you’re like, “What are we doing?” Well, you need to we need to have a purpose. We’ve been there multiple times when we had fittings and things like that when it’s just like we can’t just hit shots. There needs to be a reason for those shots. And for you, obviously, we know that you like to hit all three low ones. So, low draw, straight, and the fade. The same on the medium height, and then the same obviously on the on the the high ones. So, we call them a one flight, two flight, and three flights. And there’s a few other adaptations to that if we want to hit one a little bit harder. And we’ve got a few names that one of them we probably can’t share with you, but I think what I would like to see is just go through a few variations of those shots using that bridge there in the in the in the distance. And we’re actually going to use We’re going to put the should we put a little bit of a challenge on this straight away, Andy, or we going to watch him hit a few? Let’s hit let’s hit a couple of shots first before we challenge him. We’ll give him give him a chance at put pressure for the whole week. Give him a break. Yeah, it’s going to be interesting the next two days dealing with all these players coming out the US Open. It’s going to be like, oh, okay, how am I feeling right now? Let’s start, Aaron, on a on a one flight because this is this is the most impressive one, isn’t it? It’s the most impressive one and it’s something that’s so powerful, isn’t it? You obviously got to get a T. I’m going to I’m going to I’m going to be nice to Aaron here. And Aaron would never say this, but you played with Cam Smith at the Masters this year and he kind of said that’s pretty much as good a driving I don’t know whether you know this actually. You might might be hearing this for the first time. It’s as good a driving display as he’s ever seen. Okay. And it’s just like and and I think these one flights get the even the best players in the world to look at these shots and go, “Wow, that’s just a bit different.” So, I think it’s it’s a really powerful shot to have when the fairways are firm, it probably goes further than the full ones. Um, but even on a hole like this where the te’s a little bit elevated, it’s relatively narrow, it just feels kind of like a fairway finder and kind of keep it out of the wind and out of the things that that are around the fairway. So, and when you look at this hole here, you think in one fade? Is that what the natural the natural thing you see here? Or would you go I think with how soft the core seems uh I’d probably just hit a full shot. Maybe just let it fall left to right. But certainly if the fairways were firmer and it was a long par four then uh yeah I’d I’d happily play a one flight. Let’s see you hit a one flight. And what which one are you going to hit? You going to hit the fade draw or neutral? You tell me. Oh well you got a choice. Uh I said let’s do the one dead straight. Dead straight. Let’s go with the hardest one, shall we? T height doesn’t change too much for you on this. It just goes a little bit lower, doesn’t it? Yeah. But not not massively lower. Ball position doesn’t really change. It could go a little bit further back maybe. Yeah. And you can see Aaron’s rehearsal on all these, you know, he’s deliberate. He’s taking his time. He just wants to program the feeling that that keeps him in that right position really. What’s the apex on that? Pierce, you want the apex? Let’s get the apex on that. That’s nice. I mean, that’s probably going to be about 40 50 ft. Um, it’s pretty much on them on the fair middle of the fairway line. That was nice. Yep. That was nice. And in in terms of you playing that shot, what do you think in order to play that shot? Do you think anything different? Do you are you focused on the the trajectory? Do you think anything with the arms, the swing? I think first and foremost, it definitely starts with with the visual side. Um, again, if it’s windy and again, if we’re very elevated, I might want to see it really, really flat. And I think the visual side then starts to dictate the the choices that follow. Um, but generally technique-wise, when I’m over the ball, my stance width feels a lot more narrow. As you said, the ball position tends to not really change. Um, but for me, that narrow stance width is a cue to just take off a little bit of speed. Um, which again all helps with lowering the trajectory. the tea height is ever so slightly lower. Um I also feel on the neutral ones that I’m almost trying to play a small draw which again feels like it helps take a touch of spin off, helps keep the flight down. Um but I feel everything else stays pretty constant. I just feel like those kind of things help to lay the foundation um to hit it low and the intent of trying to hit it low um kind of works together nicely. Yeah, creating that visual picture first is it’s almost the starting point, isn’t it? feeding down to everything else there. Yeah, definitely. So, that was 45 ft high. Okay. Yeah, good. That’s probably what we generally see. And that sometimes you can hit them a little bit low if we need to. Let’s hit one now. Let’s go with a two draw. Okay. So, two flights of the mid-range flight. This might get up to around about 75 to 85 depending on where you’re at. This is a really nice shot, isn’t it? Like when when we see hit you hit this shot, Aaron, I look at it and often look at Pierce and go, “God, I’d love to be able to hit that shot.” He tries to practice and do that all the time. I’ve got to have that on control for myself. Actually, to be fair, no, I think you can do that pretty good now, to be fair. I’ve seen you do that. It’s better. Yeah, you’ve inspired, man. Very kind, Pier. He’s been nice to me today. Okay. Someone told me the other day I was being mean to you in videos. I’m I’ve just realized Nancy, if you’re watching, I’m not being nasty to him. Still at the bridge. Still at the bridge. Yeah. Very nice. There we go. Just It’s very strong flight, isn’t it? Really good into the breeze that one. Yes. So, we got club path. Yeah, club path two degrees to the right. Must have toe ended that one a little bit because it’s saying the face is ever so slightly open. So, I must have thought that was slightly out of the toe. Um, but that was that was really good. 76 on the apex. That’s about right what what we would generally see on that. Okay. So, tell you what we’ll do. Let’s get you hitting a couple more, but let’s just do a little bit of a test for you. We got something We got something lined up for you here. So, the good thing now is with the with the full swing kit as well here. We can do a bit a little bit of a combine. So, we’re going to challenge you on on a little bit of a combine on the uh on the full swing. We’re going to do three shots. Yeah, let’s do three. We got time for three. Three shots. You can call them out, Andy. Okay, I’ll call them out. We’re going to go at the bridge. Okay. Is the target. Um, and we’re just going to see what what shot score we’re going to give him a target of. Oh, average. So, you can get 200 is the max, but we’ve never seen 200. 180 is the best. So, that’s kind of like hitting at 300 yards and holding it. Okay. So, um, average on tour is 100. You get a score of 100. So, you got three shots. Okay. But, should we say should we say let’s give you let’s give you 100. Let’s give you a challenge for 100. Sounds good. Okay. Um, Pier is going to set that up. So bridge is the middle of the fairway. Yeah. We’ll go um let’s go three flight neutral to start with. We’ll do three shots. It’s pretty close to being bang on. I mean, if that’s not a high score, you can just blame Andy for pointing the full swing in the wrong place. 98. 98. Good. Okay. I think the only thing there that’s going to stop you from getting a higher score based on that shot is probably down to just hitting it a little bit further. So, okay. If you want to hit a little bit harder, you can do. Okay. Okay. Three neutral. Three. I mean, that was pretty good. I mean, I was thinking, okay, well, let’s say let’s go a three fade. Three fade. Three fade. It’s just a bit overcooked on the fade. You’d be happy with a three fade on the golf course with that, wouldn’t you? Yeah. Just turned it a little bit more than you wanted, which means it missed the target line a little bit more. So 92. Decent. Okay, let’s go. Going to go draw now. Let’s go. Definitely got draw. I think I think we go three draw. Let’s go three draw. Okay, that’s so nice. I mean, that’s got to be 110, Aaron, hasn’t it? He’s got to be 110. He’s got to He’s hoping. He’s like, let me have a look. Oh, no. What do you think? 95. 98 98 98 92. So target quality 96. It says great here. So it said it said you were great. Awesome stuff. Brilliant. Look guys, thanks Aaron. That was that was really good. Bit of a window into one of the I want to say straightest, but one of the best drivers in the world. Now, if you want more help with your game, make sure you head over to me and mygolf.com. We have a plan for every single part of your game. And let us know if you got any questions about anything in your