HIT IT LONGER!! with Golf Digest BEST YOUNG TEACHER Dan Carraher

Welcome back to the channel. I'm still here in Jacksonville, Florida, working away on my golf game today with my coach Dan Carraher and we're working on hitting bombs. At the end of this, we're going to be hitting this Persimmon driver and seeing just how far we can hit this old tech and see if the coach can hang or not. So roll the intro. It's no secret that the game of golf is getting longer and faster, and it's no secret that I'm getting older. And if I want to be able to still have a chance at competing, I got to hit the ball further. I got to work on my speed. So that's what we're doing today here at South Hampton. I'm going to meet up with my coach, Dan. I mean, it's the start of the year. Always nice to have a little session to start your year with your coach. Check in. I feel like I've been swinging it really well, but I'm coming to Dan with the focus on, let's see if we can't get my club head speed up, my ball speed up. And like, that's kind of one of the goals for 2021. That's what we're after today and this year. But before that needs to have a proper warmup. We've warmed up at the gym. Now let's have a little warmup here on the range. For those of you that are new here, this building right here, this is Dan's building at South Hampton. He built this two years ago. And that's when I came to this golf course to set this up as like home shop. He teaches out here, tons of junior programs, PGA tour players come through here, European tour players. Dan's an incredible coach. I'm really excited for some of the new viewers to get a little bit of his, uh, his wisdom and his insights, uh, in today's little lesson session. So there he is. I've built you up quite a bit in the preamble for this for any new viewers, but this is my coach Dan Kerr, her, but also one of my good buddies. We drove away in our car, in his car at my wedding too. Scary. But yeah, last year, last year. Yeah. I guess. Yeah. No, two years ago, almost two years ago. Now we got married. Shit. Sorry, Kelly. I don't even remember when I got married, but we're jumping on X three here and uh, we're going to dive into some of my numbers and Dan's going to give you a few pointers that maybe you can do at home to try to get a little bit of speed. And then maybe at the end of this, we're going to have a little head to head persimmon long drive zero. Ah, you got, you get yards after the catch man. It's more so when you're coming back and there's a little bit of that lack of trust element, you train yourself to swing slower because of the fear. And then when the fear subsides, you still just trained yourself to swing. It's in here editing. And I realized we're talking about coming back for some of the people that maybe don't remember or new. I broke my arm in February of 2019. This elbow is completely got plates and metal. So it was a better part of six months until I could really make full golf swings in that time. Obviously I spent a lot of time making smaller, slower golf swings. And then the ramifications of that are just slower golf swings because you're working on your motion. There is a subconscious thing about not hurting yourself. So I'm basically dealing with those, those side effects. Now everything's slowed down a little bit. So this is what we're doing. And we're trying to get that speed back. Okay. Back to the video. It was like, what's my clubhead speed right now? Like one tennis. Cause we used to be closer to like one 17. I think. But what's the ball speed? Low one sixties. Like I said, I know what it can be. So that part I'm not worried about. There's more in there, but I don't want it to come from you just trying to swing like all out and then hitting it super crooked. I do think that there's an element of that to learning how to swing faster. It's just literally spending some time swinging as fast as you can, not caring about the outcome or even just hitting like three balls at the end of the practice session, just full go to see what 10 out of 10 really is. Oh, it'd be great to get to like 180 this year. I think it's doable. No, it's mid one sixties and one 11th about where it's capping out and you're using the band, have it pointed down the shaft so that when it stretches, it's pulling on the butt of the club. Whereas if it's pointed this direction, it's going to pull on your hand. It's a lot less comfortable. The big thing for you, what this is going to force you to turn more and extend. So you're going to feel like to get this, to kind of keep this top, you're going to probably feel like you're almost getting taller and you're really kind of extending with what big turn wide and almost feeling like you're probably standing up a little bit. I don't think you will, but I think you'll feel like you are. And what it does is that the more you get this stretch and kind of can extend there, it actually helps the downward part and the lower your hands can get here. So more than it really allows you to explode up through the ball. So it kind of has a domino effect where each piece opens up the door to using more on the next piece. So the bigger you can kind of extend and stay tall and turn here, the easier it is for you to get your hands really low here. And then you can really explode kind of up and off the ground. So do you actually hit shots with it? You absolutely can hit shots. I wouldn't hit the first, I wouldn't make the first ball I hit. So is that enough slack? Yep. It's a lot of stretch. Yeah. Well, it's, it's not too dissimilar from the, the plane, plane mate, like that kind of feel. It works almost the inverse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's going to just naturally like, yeah. Yeah. It wants to pull the, and it's more on the force of the butt of the club where that the playmate works more on the head, more on the other end of the, but then, so I'm, when I'm here, am I, am I thinking lower body letting, like, like we were thinking about like my left knee kind of, uh, a little bit that'll be there, but it's more about getting that there. And it is good to, you won't really have to think about the hands getting low. It'll kind of automate, like it'll pull them that direction. Like let the slack do it. Yes. So like, then what it's going to be is actually you have to rotate the left side out of the way and extend, or you're going to literally fat a driver. You're going to stick it in the ground. And at first it's going to feel like there's a lot of resistance and it's hard. Yeah. But actually the more you do it, you're actually going to like, that was the same club head speed with the band where there was a ton of resistance. Oh. And it felt like I was a total whiff. Yeah. Like that was your highest ball speed yet. And it was with the band. And then when you take the band away and the resistance goes away, it feels like you're going to make a massive turn. Yeah. But the cool part is the more you push it on the backswing, the more you see the benefit in transition immediate. Like the more you good, the more you make it hard at the top and really stretch it. The faster the transition. It feels so much faster, but it also feels like a proper workout. Yes. It's not easy. And that's the heavy I use. I like the heavy one. So that's the heaviest resistance band. So that's up like five miles an hour already. I mean, the strike is kind of irrelevant at the minute because it's, and it's also managing it. Like it's kind of throwing you all over. Cause I feel like I'm hitting them kind of all kind of high and thin. Yep. Now watch, you got one without it. It feels like the club is literally like just going to fly in your backswing. That was one 14 and one 66. Yeah. And it was hit here. Yeah. That's why the one you hit solid got up to like one 69, but like it went from, I would call it one 11 being the best to like one 14 pretty easily. It's forcing you to create more load going back by making it harder. And that's making it easier in transition. And then what happens is when you take it away now, you've got all, none of that resistance there. So you actually can load up bigger than you were before. Like one 13, one 66, but it was good. 288 carry though. So let's do a practice swing. Okay. So get to the top. Yep. So it's going to be, this is going to be tall arms wide and then as low as you can there. Part of the practice session has to be not caring where it goes. Like, and that's when making any change, but especially if there's going to be a focus on speed, like first learn how to swing that fast. Then you learn how to manage and control it, but you don't learn how to control it before you learn how to do it. Good. But that's actually probably the straightest one you hit. And I'd say if you load it more, but the correct way, you're not adding a negative. You're adding a positive. Like that's one of the slower ones, but actually went forever, but that's still three miles an hour faster than before. Boom. We've had some fun. We've learned a lot, a lot of knowledge bombs from DC. Now let's see if you can put his money where his mouth is and let's, you love a good persimmon driver. Yeah. So let's, uh, let's one, one ball each or two ball longest one. You need to do two. Okay. This is what we're working with McGregor. Tony gave Dan a little bit of time to warm up, to hit a few. So it's a fair fight. Oh, I hit it right off the chunk. Go ball Terry. Two 66. Two 73. Oh, I cured it. Two 60. You got 13 more yards in that tank. I think that could. Two 64. One game winning streak. Got it by nine yards. Dive into the whoop data on that. 11 and a half strength on that golf exercise, 581 calories, about the heart rate up to one 69. Cause when I was doing those, those band things like that was an actual workout felt really, really good. And I'm sure when I get to doing that, um, back at the house, it's going to be some nice little workouts there. Good day today. 79% recovered 13.4 day strain. So far dive into team AJ it's January. So recovery is what we're all about. And I'm, I'm 79 today, but let's see who's got the best average monthly recovery for January, because you know what? You're going to get a free strap, a new strap, Matthew Burks. You are the most recovered person this month of January on team AJ. And if you want to join a team, AJ, just use the invite code, AJ golf in your. And if you want to join whoop, you can use the code AJ golf for a free month off a six month membership. Matthew Burke, hit me up in the DMS. Cause we're going to send you a new strap. That's it. I hope you enjoyed that little insight into, uh, my new year's driving session with my coach, Dan, pretty simple, straightforward stuff, nothing crazy new, but that drill so effective and it's going to help me with every club in the bag. And I'm going to Walmart right now to get an elastic band. So hopefully you can gain a little bit of knowledge and insight and things you can apply to your own game to hit that golf ball a little bit further, make a better golf swing. Just enjoy the game. A whole heck of a lot more. If you liked the video, give it a thumbs up, subscribe. If you're not subscribed, and I'm going to see you in the next episode.