Skying My Drives

Just lately I've started to sky my drives.

I don't do it every time, just once or twice a round.

Now there are two things I've realised about this....

1) I changed my tee size.  When I had my driving lesson the pro said that in his opinion my tee (Yellow brush tee) was too high.  So I changed to a Pink castle tee.  This seemed OK but it looked a little too low for my driver.  So then I stated using a Grey castle tee.  Now I know that they recommend that half a ball should be above your driver at address.  So do I change my tee?

2) Every time that I sky my drive I know that I have tried to hit the ball harder than normal.  It also feels as though I've hit down on the ball rather than sweeping it away.

Has anybody any drills/ideas that they think might help stop me doing this?

Russ

Russell, you have answered your own question. Half a ball is the recommended height and too steep an angle of attack will often cause a skied shot. Also the ball is swept away from you.

Thanks for the advice. 

With the grey castle tees half of the ball is above my driver.

It appears that I'm either trying to 'HIT' the ball or I'm reverting to my iron swing instead of my driving swing!

I might try and use a wooden tee for a while and see if that helps.

Russ

Why do you have two different swings, Russell? the only difference between the two is where the ball is positioned in relation to the bottom of the arc, An iron shot is struck on the downswing and a wood slightly on the upswing.

I don't have two different swings John, it just feels like it when I sky one of my drives!

The sky shot feels like I'm hitting a lob wedge when I should be doing a nice wide swing to sweep the ball off the tee, but on the bad shots it feels like I'm hitting down on the ball.

I'll have to try and concentrate more when I'm driving to make sure I don't do the chopping down bit.

I'll put up how I do as I'm running a winter league event tomorrow at Weald Park GC.

Russ

I have watched your progress from the VGS days to here on Golfshake, Russell, and it appears to me that you are doing everything right, as your handicap has steadily come down. We all have days when we hit silly and outrageous shots, the secret is knowing how to cure them and like I said you do know the answers.

Enjoy Weald Park, played there a few times, very nice course for boosting ones moral, not too difficult.

Well I played Weald Park GC today and I didn't sky the ball once.

I went back to using a light red (pink) castle tee and it looks like this solves the problem.

John I do like Weald Park, but today the wind was up and it made it hard work.

Russ

If it wasn't so funny, Russ I would think you were being serious. A pink tee solves skied tee shots, hahahahaha.

When the wind is up the ball must be kept low.

Eureka!! great discovery Russ  I have got  my two little girls painting all my white tees pink.LOL.

I've had this problem from time to time and hitting it harder is always in the equation (in my case it results in me dropping my head down). A good tip I use to remedy this is to tee the ball up even higher and concentrate on sweeping the ball away, more or less what John said, it helped me.

 By the way my haandicap is 11 but I don't know how to change it other than filling in score cards...can I change it manually?

Pat,

Click on 'Tools' at the top

When the page loads, click on 'Handicap Tools' from the list at the left of the screen

When the page loads the 'Manually Adjust Handicap' will be visible

Chris, thanks for that.

 I should have added to my comments above that this should not be tried on the first tee. Hit the practice area (not driving ranges unless yo can use your own tees) and hit 20 at the silly height, tee up as normal and see the difference.