Golf Driving Accuracy EXPLAINED – Driver Golf Swing Tips For Straight Tee Shots

How straight should you hit your driver in golf? If you’re chasing perfect fairway hits, this video will challenge everything you think you know about driving accuracy. We dive into real-world data from Arccos Golf to reveal surprising truths about how to hit your driver straight and whether fairway hit percentages matter as much as you think.
You’ll learn:

✅ The actual driver accuracy stats by handicap and age for both men and women
✅ Why older golfers often hit more fairways than younger players (and what you can learn from them)
✅ How to improve your setup to promote consistency off the tee
✅ The importance of practising a pre-shot routine like the pros do
✅ A simple tee-in-fingers drill to control clubface and hit straighter drives
✅ Why aiming straight down the middle might be hurting your driving accuracy
✅ The difference between fairways hit and true accuracy
✅ A powerful test of decision-making on the course, which drive would you choose?

We also cover key drills to help with clubface control, forearm rotation, and how to grip the club to make solid contact and avoid those destructive penalty and recovery shots. Whether you’re trying to hit your driver longer and straighter, or just want to stop racking up lost-ball penalties, this is the driver lesson you need.
Want to know how far you should hit your driver for your age? Watch this video next!

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how straight should you be hitting your driver 
and what does accuracy actually mean for men and women across all ages in today’s video I’m going 
to share with you some amazing data from our cost which might just change the way you think about 
your driver and what accuracy actually means as usual with these videos there’s going to be some 
graphs coming up as the video goes on when we get to that part just pause the video if you want to 
really digest what the graph means for you and your ability and your age remember to subscribe 
to the channel if you like the information in this video for more free videos today’s question 
how accurate are you with your driver and I’ll be interested in how you answer that question 
so let’s start with the men’s driving accuracy chart which you can see here and what we notice 
is some interesting patterns that I think we can all learn from some of them are obvious the 
lower handicappers are the most accurate across all range groups that’s something you would kind 
of expect they’re better players they’re lower handicappers they’re probably going to hit the 
ball down the middle a lot more often but what’s also interesting is we see that actually increases 
with age so 50 6070s regardless of what handicap increases the level of accuracy even with the 
60s and 70s consistently hitting more fairways kind of outperforming their counterparts younger 
counterparts of around the same handicaps then if we look at the women’s accuracy chart it’s a 
similar pattern we see 50s and 60s the highest levels of accuracy across all handicaps the same 
as the men the lower handicappers are generally the more straight players again it’s the same 
patterns so what is happening that makes these more mature golfers really start to dial in their 
accuracy now one could be lack of distance so as soon as they’re losing distance as they get older 
it would be easier to hit straight but we don’t want you to lose distance what else we could be 
learning from the more mature golfers is maybe they found their consistent space to play they 
found their consistency of routine and of how to actually hit the driver off the tea let’s build 
some foundations so let’s nail setup i see so many golfers with their driver just getting set 
up completely wrong if you want to see the full setup with driver maybe watch the video coming 
up in the corner or come back to it i can link to it at the end as well and in the description 
down below but you’ve got to nail setup making mistakes in setup is free gifts to golf and golf 
is going to take many free gifts from you so when you’re practicing just get a couple of clubs if 
you’re someone who struggles with setup and create that station on the ground just make sure setup 
is being drilled so you’re not varying your ball position you’re not varying your aim from shot to 
shot you’re trying to build on those foundations of consistency but the key with these drills is to 
make sure you do enough with them so becomes kind of second nature but also is that second nature 
then bleeding out onto the course meaning the amount of people I see use those kind of drills at 
the range but it doesn’t improve their aim because it’s doing it for them so you need to find out if 
you are that kind of golfer which is about using the drill using the aid drilling it in and then 
removing the safety net and see if that actually plays out on the course to allow you to gain the 
consistency of setup that you want because you might find that’s really helping but at the same 
time you could find those stirrups that forced kind of putting your feet into a position is 
making you not do it meaning it don’t reflect out here on the course use pre-shot routine pre-shot 
routine is crucial for you trying to bleed what you do on your practice sessions out here onto the 
course one of the biggest things with my son who’s just started playing golf he used to do a pre-shot 
routine next to the ball do his practice swing then he would step over and hit a shot and he 
could be pointing anywhere really cheap easy tip i got him to look down the line milo I said just 
look from behind even do your practice swing here from behind and then as you walk in your visual of 
where you’re trying to hit is much more realistic and the big problem with pre-shot routine is 
people actually don’t practice it if you’re not going to the range and working in your pre-shot 
routine into a batch of shots then arguably you’re not practicing don’t just leave it for the course 
get your pre-shot routine to help build that consistency of you getting into the same position 
each time looking down the same lines but make sure you practice it at the range as much as you 
do at the course and the final one this is crucial for anyone who plays with curvature aim for your 
curvature so if I’m going to hit a cut I’m going to aim up the left and I might even shift even 
further left to move that ball into target and move it away from any issues out there i see 
so many golfers thinking that they need to aim straight people come for lessons and I say “Well 
you’re drawing the ball lovely but they’re all missing left why don’t you aim five yards to the 
right that’ll bring them more on target.” They say “You’re not allowed to do that got to aim at the 
target.” No you got to get your ball to finish at the target you must aim for your shapes don’t just 
think aiming down the middle of every fairway is the answer to straighter drives it’s not the best 
players aim for their shapes so let’s break down the chart a little bit more and delve a little bit 
deeper and look at the men’s wayward driver shots by index by handicap and what we start to notice 
is similar patterns as you would expect but we’ve broken it down into penalty shots and recovery 
shots so penalty shots is anything which is costing you a penalty in a ditch over the hedge in 
out of bounds anything that you have to drop the ball down and play again and take a penalty shot 
and then we’ve got recovery shots recovery shots is when you don’t have clear line of sight towards 
the hole you cannot advance it forwards you have to come out basically sideway sideways and make 
a recovery i think it’s like you can’t make more than maybe 50% of the distance but what we see 
from these numbers is penalty shots increase with handicap that is understandable lower handicapper 
golfers are probably keeping the ball more in play than not recovery incidents happen more through 
handicap as well so they’re having to hit more recovery shots the higher handicap you are more 
penalty and having to hit it more recovery you having to come out sideways more often and what’s 
interesting with the recovery shots is they show a bigger jump in percentages from 7.6 6 to 33% 
with the higher handicappers and then obviously the total waywood shots is a combination of those 
two um numbers but what we see is it’s not just distance it’s control it’s it’s controlling the 
face the ability to get the ball on the face and the path of the club working in a way to help them 
keep the ball in a narrower set of playing fields and there’s a key skill that I see as a coach 
between high handicappers and lower handicappers let’s address it so we’ve got two really good 
drills to help you understand how to control the club face in two different ways first off I 
want you just to get a T something that resembles this T so it’s just a pink not castle tea and 
what you’re going to do pick your driver up between your little finger and your first finger 
you’re going to just place squish the round bit of the tee between your finger and first finger 
so little finger first finger so basically it’s in there now with this tee pointing down to the 
ground and out in front of you here you can see for me so it’s pointing kind of down between my 
legs what I’m going to do on the down swing is try and stick this tee into my trail foot so I 
am going to really try and feel like I’m ramming it down into my trail foot now what this does is 
twofold it’s going to get the club face rolling the way you want it to roll where the face is 
coming more down to the ground which is going to help it present better loft make it not go off 
to the right so much if you do it too much if I point this tee somewhere towards my ankle that 
rolls the face too much so now we’re going to go low and left if I point this tee out in front 
of me here I can actually see it here it’s not going to get anywhere near spiking my foot this 
is going to hit the ball high and right just to show you that so te out that way that’s going to 
send it up there and to the right don’t want those next one here I’m going to just push it in towards 
my ankle it’s turning that face down and you can see that one go very much the opposite low and to 
the left we don’t want them either so feeling like you’re spiking your trail foot right at the end 
in the toes with this tea is such a good feeling of control in the face what it also does is it 
gets this angle out which people don’t like to do they like to hold on to this kind of lag angle 
which has been taught so weirdly for so many years by actually getting that angle out which all the 
best players do it’s measured i can show you fact after fact good players getting their lead wrist 
moving down this way it’s called deviation they are getting that angle out ready just to turn 
through and deliver the club if you keep that angle in that club is going to be delivered at the 
wrong angle so it’s doing twofolds it’s helping you control face it’s helping you control face as 
well with owner by getting making sure that club is actually coming out of the angles you put in 
to allow you just turn and deliver now you can hit balls with the tea in here just be careful subject 
to how quirky everyone is when they hit shots it could pinch so hit it soft just make sure you can 
I can hit shots like this it doesn’t matter but some people are moving their fingers around as 
they hit and I don’t want you to hurt yourselves the next tip we don’t need this so the question I 
want you to ask yourself is if you place the club out in front of you this way and flatten lead 
wrists with lead arms just one hand holding the club at the top is can you with some level of 
ease do this so what I’m doing here is rotating my club 180 degrees if you like so from here up 
to 90 and then over so my lead arm is basically rotating from here to here and this is something 
we see good players do as they’re coming down in to hit the ball and we don’t see amateurs do it as 
well so you could have the wrist angle set but if you’re then just pushing linear towards the target 
with this elbow you see these kind of impacts or even this way it’s often because they’re not very 
good at putting this forearm rotation in now if you are struggling to do this move here where you 
flip the club this way when you hold it at the end where it feels that it’s most stressful just try 
and flatten lead wrist or lead arm as you do it it’s probably because you’ve got the club through 
this part of your palm we’ve got to make sure the club is getting into this part of your palm in 
your grip if you want to have a better chance of using this for most golfers now there are 
exceptions with this cuz the common pattern when I say this is people say “What about Bryson who has 
a weak grip and he stands really high but he has fantastic forearm rotation.” Unfortunately we’re 
not all Bryson and to his ability so for most golfers for giving you the better chance based 
on many students that I’ve worked with and many other pros has over the years if you got someone 
as good as Bryson you’re just going to use their skills if you’ve got golfers as average as the 
rest of us you’re trying to improve your chances you need to be able to get this forearm rotation 
in by making sure that grip’s in the lower part of your palm is just key for that and one little 
basic tip for you to try and feel that when you’re practicing you can hit a shot out in front of you 
and what I want you to do just pause on the way through and try and feel like this but end of the 
club is pointing somewhere down at the ball it’ll give you a great feeling of actually releasing 
that club on the way through which might help you get some feelings of better club face control to 
help you hit more fairways the difference between higher handicappers and lower handicappers it’s 
the control of that flattish face this last tip and idea hopefully is going to change the way you 
think about driving accuracy forever we’re going to play a little game i’m going to play three 
holes hit two balls off each hole and I want you in the comments down below don’t cheat to tell 
me which drive would you choose out of the two drives and then at the end I’ll explain to you 
which ones I would go for so this drive ends up in the rough it’s very close to the stream on the 
left but it’s nowhere near the out of bounds on the right so even though I’m close to the penalty 
shot on the left I’m in the rough i’m nowhere near the out of bounds on the right which is a worse 
penalty shot and as you can see I can still pitch it onto the green from there this drive right in 
the fairway middle right it’s definitely way close to the out of bounds yes I would prefer to be in 
the fairway this gives me a good opportunity of pitching up onto the green but out of these two to 
be fair I wouldn’t care they are both in play so drive one this is a par five reachable ideally 
you do need to be a bit up the left but up the right shortens the hole this is middle right on 
the fairway what I’d class as a good drive second drive which one are you choosing this one is up 
the left and this one is going in the tree line there could be a chance I’m blocked out so this 
is right hand side fairway got to go up over these trees it shortens the hole down um definitely 
feel like I have to do something with this one which is up and over that should be right side 
to on the green so this one’s in the rough it’s definitely never going to really reach the out 
of bounds it’s not that far from the fairway and nowhere near the water on the right it’s further 
in but as you can see even from the bad lie I can chase this up the one on the right has got a 
chance of going in the lakes this one’s got a chance of being here in the tree line which 
is all chip outable and as much of hitting the fairway as the other one i can hit a pretty 
average second and run that up between the two I’ll be honest with you I kind of don’t care 
final test super super tight hole crazy tight first shot up the middle right good drive take it 
all day long hitting driver is actually a bit of a silly play but I’m doing it for this video 
second drive this is leaking more off to the right it’s going to be in the tree lines there’s 
definitely going to be a bit of a hope with this one i’m going to find it but hopefully should be 
able to play it so this one’s in the rough and in amongst the trees but I’ve got clear line of 
sight to the flag which is lucky but it’s going to happen more than it’s not and even if it’s not 
I’m going to be able to move it up near the green would I prefer this one in the fairway well of 
course I would but again I don’t care i would take both of these two because this hole it’s 
have a swing at it or lose it literally you’re going to if you can’t swing at it you’re losing 
it so both of these are close enough to where I intended to hit it for me to be able to move this 
one and the next one somewhere near the green or the hole for you to get more accurate you’ve 
got to start valuing what accuracy is and an accuracy is about having a shot at the next 
green or moving it towards the green it’s not about fairway counting now chasing fairways in 
some minds is the only way to play this hole is almost an example of that but you can still get 
away with it within reason but making sure you’re picking optimal targets that are avoiding issues 
gor bushes bunkers water hazards even if it means ending up in the rough which is not a fairway hit 
is still in my book classed as accuracy as long as you’re not hitting recoveries or penalty 
shots and that’s what you should be counting count how many recoveries you’re having off your 
drives chip out sideways where you can’t advance it towards the green and count how many penalties 
you’re having it’s gonna be way better than just chasing fairways which is going to make a huge 
difference to your score now if you want to find out how far you should be hitting your driver 
for your age this video’s really going to help