6. Follow the 80 percent rule

Your instinct on long shots is to exert an extra effort to get more power, but it actually rids you of power and distance. You’ll get better results and thus more distance by swinging your driver with the same tempo you would your pitching wedge.

Pros never hit their shots all out. Take a deep breath for relaxation and focus on swinging the club with 80 percent of your potential power. A real secret for longer drives is to avoid tensing up your muscles. You need to keep your arms soft and body fluid. Relaxed muscles are fast muscles, which breed power and distance.

To this end, you need to, first of all, hold the club with a lighter grip pressure.


7. Swing around your right leg on the downswing

To gain more power and distance, it's essential to coil fully on the backswing. You need to get your left shoulder above your right knee at the top of the backswing.

Once you've wound up fully that way, all you have to do is concentrate on rotating around your right leg so your right shoulder comes under your left. That not only promotes an upward blow into the ball, but also helps maintain the spine angle tilting away from the target.

More importantly, that enables you to stay behind the ball through impact, encouraging a powerful release. If you allow your body to move ahead of the ball at impact, you can never hit the ball far and straight. So, make sure that you swing around your right leg on the downswing and you will hit the ball farther.


8. Visualize yourself throwing a discus

A core ingredient of prodigious length off the tee is a full release. Your right arm needs to be fully extended through the hitting zone with the hand in a position similar to the release used when throwing a discus. Just imagine yourself throwing a discus and you will produce a powerful draw.


9. Tilt and turn your shoulders

Turning your shoulders on too flat a plane on the backswing prevents you from delivering as much speed to the ball as when you turn them on a plane.

For maximum power and distance, you need to tilt your shoulders as you turn them. The right amount of turn and tilt puts your shoulders on plane, helping you apply your potential power and speed to the ball.

To check if you are tilting your shoulders correctly, place your driver across the front of your shoulders and turn to the top of the backswing. When you turn your shoulders correctly, the shaft will point toward the ground slightly above the ball.


10. Turn your chin to look at the target

Recreational golfers setting up to the ball properly with a consistent pre-shot routine tend to destroy their good alignment and sound posture at the last moment when they take a last look at the target.

They get cockeyed by raising their head to look at the target instead of turning, thus changing their body alignment and posture, particularly shoulder position and spine angle.

To avoid this fault, you need to turn your head to look at the target so your eye-line does not change or rather continue to stay parallel to the ball-target line.

To this end, it's best to focus on turning your chin, not your head. Turning your chin toward the target to look at it ensures that you retain the eye-line, body position and spine angle properly established during the early part of the pre-shot routine.

So, turn your chin for every shot from driver to putter and you'll swing better, thus hitting the ball better.