BROOKS KOEPKA – DRIVING FOR SHOW
Increase your distance off the tee to reduce your scores.
The old adage that you drive for show but putt for dough has lost significant credence since Dr. Mark Broadie’s overhaul of the PGATour’s performance statistics revealed power driving to be the No.1 contributing factor to low scoring.
In simple terms, Broadie’s research showed that at Tour level, contrary to what you might think, it is preferable to be 300-plus yards down the hole in the rough than 270 yards down the middle of the fairway. Need convincing? Examine American Brooks Koepka’s stats up to the 2019 WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational.
The four-time major winner
‘I TRY TO FEEL THAT I MAKE A THREE-QUARTER LENGTH SWING
ranked 13th in driving distance at 308 yards yet 93rd in driving accuracy, hitting only 62 percent of fairways with his tee shots. Surely, those wayward drives would cost Koepka big time? Not so. He ranked 8th in greens in regulation (71 percent) and 3rd in overall scoring average (69.27). All of which means that he was leading the PGA Tour in FedEx Cup points and official prizemoney to end 2019, as well as being the No.1 player in the world through to February 2020.
But while Koepka looks like he has the ball on a string with his driver these days, he hasn’t always found this area of the game easy. “He’s much more consistent now,” says Koepka’s coach Claude Harmon III. “He’s a way better driver of the ball now than when I met him eight years ago. He always had a lot of power, of course, but he used to hit a big draw and couldn’t control it as well. Now he hits more cuts off the tee. And he has also become a really good putter. He’s become better pretty much across the board. He has a complete game.”
For Koepka himself, the secret is not to overthink it. “I’m not mechanical,” he says. “If I’m thinking too much about the swing, it’s not good. I hit it far, yeah, but my key swing thought is not to overswing. That’s what gets me and most amateur golfers in trouble. They think that by trying to swing harder they’ll hit it farther. They won’t. I just try to feel like I’m making a threequarter turn back and letting it go from there and make sure to turn all the way through.”
While you might not be able to generate 128 mph clubhead speed and hit it 320 yards off the tee like Brooks, you can learn from his technique. Harmon highlights three areas from his driving that you can introduce to your own game.