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Why am I so tense with a driver in my hands?

Badger_Golfer said:
Could be a lot of things. It could be that you are trying to kill the ball and are tensing up. With every other club we have a certain distance that we want to hit the ball but with the driver the distance we have in mind is often, "as far as possible".
You could also be tensing up because you are fearing slicing or hooking it out of bounds or into the next fairway.
You could also be tensing up out of anticipation of hitting a good drive to set up the rest of the hole or fear of hitting a bad driving and having to play catch up for the rest of the hole.
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I Like this...hitting it as far as possible...I know my club yardages. I know that a good drive for me, with roll out is 200 yards. At the present time, without instruction or a loss of 50 ponds, 20 years and increased flexibility I will not hit it further. I have no other club in my bag that is 200 yards so on any hole that is greater than say 380, I am happy to be on in 3.

That realization took the pressure off for me.
 
uitar99 said:
I Like this...hitting it as far as possible...I know my club yardages. I know that a good drive for me, with roll out is 200 yards. At the present time, without instruction or a loss of 50 ponds, 20 years and increased flexibility I will not hit it further. I have no other club in my bag that is 200 yards so on any hole that is greater than say 380, I am happy to be on in 3.

That realization took the pressure off for me.
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Glad it helped!
 
Mental. Your brain says hit the ball a long distance, and thus the swing becomes an emotional extension of an expected, or "acceptable" outcome. The brain goes into fight mode and all bets are off to replicate any pre-swing drills before the actual shot. If I could play with invisible balls I think I would use my practice swing for every shot.
 
My honest fear with driver is that I know from all the clubs in the bag, it is by far the most expensive, and the most fragile. One sky mark etc can ruin your whole round.
 
annsguy said:
I have to agree with both of you guys. I realize even when I talk about the driver I say things like if I could drive the ball I 'd be pretty good. Mental.
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So performance anxiety. Perhaps stop worrying about how far you hit the ball, or how far you think you "should" be able to hit it, and concentrate instead on how well you hit it. Perhaps once you start hitting it well, the distance will eventually begin to happen?

At least that's what seems to be working for me as a beginner.
 
It’s commitment, trust, fear of the result. You name it.

it’s like this with every club but you’re probably not typically driving it well so it compounds it.

Don’t hit the ball hard but hit it “fast.” Don’t be afraid of the result.
 
I used to have this issue with the driver and even the 5 iron. It's why I was a believer in the mini driver for a period of time because it didn't give me that anxious feeling and performed well. There have been stretches where the driver is my favorite club, which is obviously when I'm hitting it well.

For me, the anxiety goes away when I stop caring so much where the ball is going to go. It's going to be a good shot or something the opposite. Now when the "other" shots pile up, it certainly rattles the confidence, that's kind of where I am right now with my game.
 
Lack of confidence is probably the number one cause.
 
I haven't listened to the whole thing, but there's a pretty good audio book out there called 'Zen Golf' (I'm sure it's available in paper form as well) that gives a ton of advice on calmness. Might be worth a listen or look. I think the reason some get nervous/stiff on the tee box is for the most obvious reason in the world... if your group plays 'ready golf', it's one of the few times in a round where all eyes are focused on you. I also think the tee shot sets up the rest of the hole, so while chipping and putting may technically be more crucial to scoring, the drive sets it all up and psychologically for me, how I'm driving has a big impact on my overall play on a given day.
 
I was thinking about this some today and I think sometimes we don't differentiate between how we think of tension and aggressive pressure. There is a tension that we need to relieve in order to simply focus and hit well, yet the driver swing requires a certain amount of grip pressure and strength tension, yet not as much the anxiety tension on the muscles. Kind of hard to explain this, but my guess is some can relate to this.

Look at Bryson now and how much pressure he is exerting upon the club especially in his back swing. It is almost tensely violent for lack of a better term, but the point is it is off the charts with violent velocity going back and coming down through. I would imagine if he did any more he would not be able to maintain a follow through and would lose his balance completely.

I was watching Moe's videos not long ago and noticed although his swing is smooth and fluid in oscillation, his hands and arms had a lot of pressure on them through the swing. No matter how you add it up, there is a certain amount of "tension" in the driver swing (not trying to state that in a bad way just that tension has to be defined when dealing with the driver swing).
 
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