There is nothing more sole destroying than not being able to rip a ball down the fairway confidently and instead constantly worrying or hoping that it stays in play.
A couple of bad drives at the start of your round can ruin your score and mentality for the day.
Think about your last round of golf.
How many shots did your bad drives cost you?
If you could change those bad drives to fairway finders, how much would your golf game and scores improve?
Our guess would be a lot. Splitting fairways is necessary if you want to lower your scores and become a top-tier golfer or, at the very least, the best in your friend group.
Below, we have laid out 10 tips for better drives. Follow the below process, and you will find more success, feel less anxious on the tee box, and most importantly, shoot lower scores!
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Find The Perfect Spot On The Tee Box
Every hole on the course starts with you shoving a tee into the ground, but ask yourself how much do you think about this before you hit driver?
Do you check the slope of the tee box?
Do you just tee off roughly where everyone else in the group does?
Picking the perfect spot for you and knowing why it’s perfect for your swing can make a difference in splitting fairways more often.
Firstly, if you play on a course with crisp and perfectly flat tee boxes, you’re one of the lucky ones. Flat tee boxes make your life easier because you just have to pick which side to drive from.
Simply, golfers likelier to hit a fade should tee off on the right side of the tee box. (Left side for lefties). Then aim for the opposite side of the fairway from where you teed up.
This will allow you to hit your natural shot shape better.
Flipping this around if you’re likely to hit a draw tee up on the left side.
Now, if the tee box is not level and there are slopes, meaning your feet may be above or below your tee or golf ball, you have to be careful.
As you may know, balls above your feet will promote a draw, and balls below will encourage a fade.
So, if you play a fade already, you may want to try to avoid hitting with the golf ball below your feet at all costs. Something as small as this could turn your fade into a slice.
To counteract this, try to find a spot where the tee is above your feet, and it may help you straighten out your drive. The same applies to a draw just swap it around.
Work On Your Getting Stronger And More Flexible
Another way you can start hitting more fairways is to get both stronger and more flexible. Strength isn’t just about getting stronger so you can hit the ball further.
To me, it’s about being more stable in your frame and being able to swing the club faster with ease.
For example, a stronger core will help you maintain the correct posture and turn powerfully throughout the golf swing.
A stronger upper body makes it easier to control the clubface, and a strong lower body gives you a solid base that allows transfer your weight properly.
Working on these three areas makes for effortless power and control of your swing/club, making for longer, straighter, more consistent tee shots.
Getting stronger is great but if you asked any tour pro, they would tell you it all means nothing without flexibility.
Working on improving your overall flexibility will increase your range of motion. Meaning you can now turn fuller without feeling tight or constraint.
Add this all together and you have a silky smooth repeatable swing built to nail fairways over and over again.
Don’t Become Stressed On The Tee Box
Becoming stressed or tense before hitting your tee shot will not end well. Listen, you’re probably sick of people saying golf is all about your mindset, but it is.
When you tense up and can’t stop thinking about your golf ball flying into the trees, water, OB, or nearly clobbering someone on the next fairway, your body and subconscious pick that up.
The more you think of something, the more likely you will make it happen.
Think about it: how do you all end up doing anything in your life?
You don’t just wake up one day and decide to get a tattoo or join the gym, you usually think about it more and more until you make it happen.
Well, this timescale is sped up in golf, and nothing but bad thoughts right before you take your shot will result in… more bad shots.
So, what can you do to counteract this?
See The Ball Landing In The Fairway
Thinking positively can be tough on the golf course, especially on days when you’re not playing good golf.
It can be difficult to erase the memory of the 60-yard slice you hit on the last hole, but it can be done.
Visualizing your ball flying off the tee and into the fairway is crucial to your success on the golf course. Something you can try to help with this process is to remember all of your best tee shots.
Remember how they felt, the ball flight, and where they landed.
This should help you jump-start the positive thought engine that should get you through the round. It’s important to remember that one bad bump in the road doesn’t empty all the fuel from your engine.
For every bad drive, think of 10 good ones. Also, just because it doesn’t end up in the fairway doesn’t make it a bad drive. If you have a shot at the green, then it should be considered a good drive.
Keep Track Of Your Drives
Keeping track of how you played each hole might sound like something for the pros, but amateur golfers of all levels can benefit from this greatly.
You can go down the old-school route of bringing a notepad around the course with you, or you can try to remember after the round or type it into the notes section on your phone.
Whichever method you use over a few rounds, you can get a better picture of where your driving is failing you and make adjustments.
For example, you may notice that you hit 3/14 fairways, 7/14 in the rough with a shot at the green still, and 4/14, you got into big trouble to the right of the fairway.
From this, you can obviously see that working on drills to fix your slice will help you hugely.
It’s also a big help to golf instructors and coaches so they can get a better picture of your overall game.
The more detail you go into, the better.
Describe how you felt on the drive, where you were on the fairway, how far left or right you were from your desired location, and so on.
Work With Whatever Your Stock Shot Is
After tracking your stats, you should be able to get a good picture of where your misses are, and often you find your misses follow your shot shape.
Faders will miss more on the right side and drawers on the left.
Let’s go back to the stats: you hit 3/14 fairways, missed 9/14 to the right, and 2/14 OB to the right.
Knowing all this, simply aiming further left of the fairway could change the stats to, 3/14 missed to the left, 9/14 in the fairway, and 2/14 missed to the right.
Now, don’t get a fade and a slice confused because if you hit a slice, then aiming further left could make your slice worse.
If you do suffer from a slice or a hook check the below posts for help:
Easy Fixes To Stop Hitting Slices Of The Drive
Stop Hooking Your Driver With These Simple Tips
Aim For A Smaller Target
Many golfers make the mistake of using the entire fairway as their target. Obviously, the goal is for the ball to land in the fairway, but there is some psychology at play here.
In basic terms, setting smaller targets will result in smaller misses and bigger targets, bigger misses.
Think about it if you focus on a 1-yard strip of fairway dead in the center and really focus on trying to land it in that strip, if you miss right or left 15 yards, you’re still in the fairway.
However, if your target is anywhere in the fairway, if you miss left or right 15 yards, you’re in the rough.
You may think this technique is silly, but it’s used by all the greatest golfers in the world. So unless you’re better than the best, you should give it a try…
Some golfers like making strips in the fairway, while others pick a tree in the distance and keep it online, experiment with your own target-picking skills and see which works for you.
Work On Your Tempo
Tempo is king when it comes to golf, and if you want to find any sort of consistency off the tee with your driver, then tempo must become your ally.
Weekend and amateur golfers often chop and change their swing tempo every time they play or keep using one that’s not working.
A good tempo will depend on your age, ability, and your physicality.
But the building blocks of a good tempo always start with a nice smooth backswing, a downswing that only happens when the backswing has stopped, and a follow-through that rips through the ball.
Many golfers never complete their backswing properly as they are in a rush to crush the ball, but by stopping this process and rushing things, you can rest assured they will spray the ball around the course.
Work on your tempo, and you will find success not only with your driver but in all aspects of your game.
Don’t Leave It In the Bag
This will be the most controversial advice on this list, as some golf coaches or blogs will tell you to leave the driver in the bag when it’s not working.
And while hitting a shorter club like a wood, hybrid, or long iron on short, tight holes can be a good choice, you should not be using them for the majority of your round.
Ask yourself this question: what do you want to achieve, or what is your end goal?
There is not a person out there who doesn’t want to have a feeling of confidence standing on the tee box, knowing that they’re about to crush one right down the fairway with the big dawg.
But how can you achieve this by not using it and creating a fear that every time you use that club instead of your 3 wood, it will end badly?
When you’re struggling with your driver, you have to double down, you have to use it more than usual, crush balls in the fairway, or drive it around in the front seat of the car with you.
Whatever it takes, the more you use it, the better.
“Nobody ever caught a fish by leaving their rod at home.” – (BBG Original Bad Metaphor)
Use Launch Monitors When Possible
Using a launch monitor can help you get into the route cause of your mishits from the tee box.
Now, some launch monitors are expensive, but you can get some for much cheaper these days, but you will be looking at spending a few hundred dollars minimum.
However, to save yourself money, most driving ranges these days have tracking software set up. Meaning for the price of a bucket of balls and a few extra bucks, you can take advantage of this technology.
By using launch monitors, you will better be able to see why your misses occur, things like your swing path, club face, club head speed, and launch angle can help you find a fix.
For example, you could be battling with a slice for months, changing your swing path, shifting your feet, trying , even to hook the ball but nothing is working.
Then you hit a few on the launch monitor at your local driving range and find out your clubface has been too open the entire time, and your swing was never the issue.
This piece of information could save you months, if not years of trying to figure it out on your own, which means you can look forward to hitting fairways sooner.
Make Sure You’re Using The Right Driver
Last but not least, make sure the driver you’re hitting is the right one for you.
This means ensuring that you’re using the right driver shaft, have the correct settings set up, and even the right loft.
Every golfer has been guilty of just buying a driver because it looks cool when they are just starting out in golf, but that is by no means the smartest thing to do.
Buying a driver at random is like buying a lottery ticket.
You need to look at things like how fast your swing speed is and what is your shot bias amongst other things.
Sometimes, it’s not actually the golfer, and it is the club’s fault, only sometimes though!
If you think it’s your clubs fault and need help selecting a new driver checkout our below post:
The Best 7 Drivers On The Market (2023-2024)