Medicus Driver Trainer

Article 4 in the Series: How to Cut 10 Strokes Off Your Golf Score Using Medicus

Refine Your Swing Using the Medicus Driver Trainer and Other Medicus Clubs

Medicus Driver Improves all aspects of your swing from the takeaway to downswing.

This is article 4 in the 5 part series “How to Cut 10 Strokes Off Your Golf Game Using Medicus”. 10 strokes in this case is for a player who shoots 100 to shoot 90. If you already shoot around 90, you might expect to improve by 5 strokes and get your scores down to 85. That would obviously be excellent improvement.

Putting Review

We have been discussing using the Medicus putter training aid and improving scores via improved putting. This is pretty logical, since

putting can easily be one third of the strokes in a round of golf. Several great practice drills and games have been offered, but the key is practice. If you are going to improve your putting you are going to need to work at it. There is no magic pill you can take at night and wake up being a great putter. This is especially true with regard to distance control. The PGA and LPGA pros you see on TV each week seem to have uncanny touch. It is nothing for them to hit a 30 or 40 foot putt a few inches from the hole and tap it in. They can do this because they have practiced a lot and have developed great touch. Average players might 3 putt a good percentage of the time from those distances. So you need to practice as well. Playing the safety drawback game described here: Medicus Putter Training Aid will help a great deal and it is also fun. And don’t expect to make many putts from those long distances. Dave Pelz, the renown short game guru and teacher to many pros, including the likes of Phil Michelson, took a lot of data and showed that PGA tour pros putting from 30 feet will make the putt only between about 3% and 9% of the time. So you and I won’t be dropping many of those if that’s all the world’s best players can do. The biggest bang for the buck comes from practicing distance control.

Ball Striking

Now let’s move on to ball striking, especially driving. Everyone wants to be able to blast drives a long way off the tee. I think many weekend players don’t really even care where they hit it, just so they hit it far. I read some report recently that accurate driving is really not a big deal. A lot of the top pros have pretty miserable fairways-hit percentages, and many players who do hit a lot of fairways are often low on the money list. I think this is misleading, however, especially for normal weekend players. When the pros miss fairways, they typically don’t miss by that much. Their margin of error is a lot greater than the average recreational player. So if they miss the fairway with a 330 yard drive they are in a lot better position than the average player who smashes one maybe 260 and is deep into the woods, in a water hazard, or out of bounds. This does happen to the pros as well, but it is pretty rare. Not only that, the pros who play on TV for a living have great skill with regard to recovery shot making. Most weekend players have nowhere near this amount of skill. So I think accuracy is important, especially for weekend players who are seriously trying to improve their scores.

Practice With a Medicus Driver

A great way to get improvement is to practice with a Medicus driver trainer and use it to warm up for each round. The Medicus driver will detect and point out swing flaws by “breaking” at the hinged joint. There are 6 parts of the swing where the Medicus will give a player feedback if his/her swing is off. That is, the Medicus driver trainer will break if there are errors in the player’s take away (you need to take the club back low and slow), during the backswing, at the top of the backswing, at the start of the downswing, at impact, and during follow-through. This article has links to short 1-2 minute videos that explain what is happening in each case. It is surely worth a look: Medicus Dual Hinge Videos

The Medicus driver also has a sensitivity adjustment, so even if you can swing the club and hit balls without it breaking, it would be wise to increase the sensitivity and see if you can still keep the club from breaking. If you get the Medicus to stay together and hit balls at the highest sensitivity, you know your swing is in pretty good shape. If you can’t accomplish this, the short videos in the article above will tell you what to work on. In any case use the Medicus driver trainer when you warm up for each round. It is heavier than a normal driver, and it will train some of your power muscles a bit. Also, it will make your regular driver feel light and easier to hit when you are on the course.

So if your Medicus driver stays together almost all the time, you have a decent driver swing. If you have any athletic ability, and reasonable coordination and strength, you should be able to hit the ball a decent distance. This would be about 250-260 yards or more for men, and maybe 200-220 yards for women with today’s hi-tech drivers. I would definitely recommend using a good modern style driver with a large head, graphite shaft, etc. The larger MOI, or moment of inertia, with these clubs is definitely worth it, especially for someone who shoots 100. You don’t need the latest and greatest driver that costs 500 bucks. You can probably find one of last year’s models at half price, and that would be fine. The incremental improvements made each year are not that great, especially since limits have been placed on head size (460 cc max), and spring coefficient of the club face.

The key then is to make sure your alignment is reasonable, and especially and most importantly, hit the ball solidly. What’s the best way to do that? I suggest swinging easily. Tell yourself that you will hit the ball at only 70% of full swing strength. Just try to hit the ball solidly and don’t over-swing. The fact is that when you try to hit the ball at 70% of maximum strength, you will probably be using closer to 95-100% without even realizing it. I always thought Fuzzy Zoeller was a great example of this. He hit the ball far, but his swing was very smooth and under control. And he always had a good follow through. And if you hit the ball solidly, it will fly farther and be more accurate. With the Medicus driver trainer you are forced to take the club back low and slow, so this facilitates the needed smooth swing.

This too will take some work. But once again, hitting balls with a Medicus driver is kind of fun, and your friends will get a kick out of swinging it once or twice. Also, if you can afford it, Medicus has other training clubs as well, including a Medicus 5 iron and a 7 iron. Hitting balls and practicing chipping with the 7 iron can make the difference of a stroke or sometimes two per round as well.

If you want to learn more about Medicus, click on the image:

Stack and Tilt Golf Swing Videos by Medicus Golf