DRIVING DISTANCE

TO GAIN POWER, USE YOUR MOST POWERFUL MUSCLES

“Put your ass into it, Mr President!” Sam Snead once told President Eisenhower. A simple lesson perhaps, but one most amateurs could benefit from. The glutes are one of the biggest muscle groups in the body, along with the thighs and shoulders. Matt Wolff is the perfect example of the modern power golfer who makes unprecedented use of these massive muscle groups to propel the ball vast distances. It is perhaps no surprise that his coach, George Gankas, draws on the wide, lusty actions of the likes of Snead, plus Byron Nelson and even Jack Nicklaus, as role models in his own coaching.

Here, Matt reveals the secrets of his power, before we look at two exercises that will help you engage and utilise your larger muscle groups. They can improve the power of any golfer, but if you can work on your fitness and flexibility too, you will get more out of them. MATT SAYS...

I would say there are two keys to the power I generate. I won’t say working on these elements will see you hit it as far as I do, but they represent directions you can move towards to reconstruct your driver swing.

I create a lot of torque and rotation. In my experience, if you can create dynamism through your body movement, your hands are going to follow… and that’s where the speed comes from. I find a bigger hip turn allows a bigger shoulder turn. My huge rotation allows me to get into the ground and just rotate out of the way on the way through. My coach, George Gankas, is huge on rotation. He will cite the older players like Sam Snead, golfers who rotated so well. If you don’t complete your turn, you can end up sliding, standing up or just pulling your arms down on the downswing. This is the source of so much of my speed.

I use the ground well. This emphasis on rotation also allows me to put a lot of force downward, into the ground, as I make my big turn. This downward pressure allows me to use the ground to move more dynamically, something that continues into the downswing as

I rotate through impact.

My swing is kind of homemade. As soon as I started golfing, I’d take the club back upright and with a little hinge in the wrist. If no one ever filmed my swing, I would have totally just thought it was straight back and straight through. So to me it feels fine. As for that little hitch just before I swing back, that dates back to my sophomore year of high school. I broke my collar bone, and when I started playing again I developed a tendency to aim right. I needed to open up my shoulders and my hips to get me back to square. So from then on I just started doing that little hitch and it kind of turned into a trademark and a little trigger to start my swing.