The Smash Lab
A skill drill from the Solid Swings drill library, used inside your personalized weekly practice plan.
How to do it
Use the launch monitor to chase smash factor. Hit 10 drivers — log smash, ball speed, and clubhead speed for each. After 5 swings, change one variable (tee height, ball position, or grip pressure) and see what happens.
How you know it’s working
Why this drill matters
Driving is the single biggest leak for handicaps above 12. Every fairway missed costs the average golfer roughly half a stroke. The drills in this section train a repeatable shape, controlled trajectory, and the discipline to pick the right club for the hole.
Inside a Solid Swings plan, every drill is paired with a personalized rationale, your real carry yardages, and a built-in scoring line so you can track session-over-session improvement.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Rushing reps without feedback. Pause between every shot and grade it against the success criteria above. If you don't know whether the last rep was good, the next 10 won't teach you anything.
- Skipping the warm-up. Cold range balls and cold short-game touch lie to you. Two minutes of easy half-swings calibrates your sense of contact before this drill starts measuring it.
- Changing too much at once. Pick a single swing thought or setup checkpoint per session. Stacking 3-4 cues turns the drill into guesswork and erases the data you came here to collect.
- Quitting on misses. The reps right after a bad shot are the most valuable. Reset your pre-shot routine, breathe, and run the next rep clean. That's where transfer to the course is built.
How This Drill Fits Into a Full Practice Plan
One drill, in isolation, won't move the needle. The Solid Swings system uses driving drills like this one inside a sequenced weekly plan: 2-3 focus areas per week, drills that build on each other, and a score-tracked feedback loop that adjusts the following month based on what actually worked. Every plan is custom-built around your handicap, your gear, and the gaps your scorecard says you have right now.
If you're running this drill on its own, that's a great start. If you want it slotted into a 4-week progression with named warm-up shots, pressure games, and a clear success rubric you can grade each rep against, that's exactly what we build inside the membership.