4 Golf Swing Distance Factors for Women to Focus On

Back 20+ years ago, in the 1990’s Annika Sorenstam had an average driving distance of 246 yards. This put her in the top 20 category for women golfers worldwide for driving distance on the LPGA Tour.

While this is still very good for female golfers today, beating the average driving distance, wouldn’t crack the top 50 worldwide anymore.

Fast forward to today and LPGA players are able to produce average driving distances between 270-290 yards! Anne Van Dam, for example, leads the LPGA Tour in 2019 with an average driving distance of 306 yards.

Hitting the ball 270-290 yards on average will put you in the top 100 for female golfers world wide. So how do you achieve these distances on tee shots with your driver?

Resources:

The Four Factors for Distance in the Golf Swing

#1: Stability

In order to generate massive amounts of power in the golf swing, your body needs to be stable. The winding up of your upper body can pull your hips and legs with it if you don’t have strong lower body stability to hold your ground and keep your feet planted.

Stability also gives your swing more control helping to improve ball striking and overall accuracy of your golf shots. These straighter hit golf shots have a better chance of going farther as opposed to slices and hooks with too much curve on them.

Read: Best Stability Exercises for Golfers

To improve your stability, start first with your core/trunk by working your ab muscles at the gym or at home using various core building exercises.

Your trunk region is a huge component of stability in the golf swing as it connects your upper body and lower body and absorbs the shock during the golf swing.

Your oblique muscles (outer abs) will feel sore especially if you hit a lot of golf shots with power. Further enhance these muscles by adding oblique exercises to increase strength and help prevent injury of them in the golf swing.

Fitness Guide: Try This Abs + Leg Workout Routine

#2: Strength

Power in the golf swing starts with your leg muscles which provide a strong base for your swing. Your arms also contribute power to your golf swing as seen in the male golf world with athletes like Tiger Woods and Rory Mcilroy hitting long drives with strong upper bodies.

Strong back muscles are important for enduring explosive movements made during your golf swing. Strong trunk muscles help generate power in the swing in addition to the stability they provide.

Strong muscles and ligaments can also help prevent joints from going beyond their range of motion. Now that you see the benefits of improving your strength to hit a golf ball with more power, let’s talk workouts.

Here are some resources we’ve found related to strength training for golf

#3: Flexibility

Flexibility is super important to a strong, fundamental golf swing. When your body is loose it’s easier to turn and make a full range of motion. A tight body can restrict your swing and create injury problems as well.

For flexibility you can under go a 10-15 minute stretching routine daily to build flexibility over time. You can also look into different yoga programs online by doing a simple google search or YouTube search for videos to follow along with.

Yoga is a fun way to relax the body, bring peace to your mind and soul, and also improve your flexibility for your golf swing.

Read: Best 10 Shoulder Exercises for Golfers

#4: Stamina

Lastly, let’s not forget the importance of stamina and having strong cardiovascular endurance. If you have every walked an 18 hole golf course you understand the fatigue your body goes through by the time you reach the last several holes.

A typical golf course can be 4 to 5 miles of walking endured over a 4 hour time span which wears the body down. If you ride in a cart, you still do a fair amount of walking to your ball and around the greens.

As your body loses energy and becomes fatigue your golf swing can start to break down and your mind loses focus causing you to be more likely to make wrong decisions on the golf course.

But this can all be reduced or prevented by working hard on your stamina. Find 30-60 minutes each day to go for a walk or a jog.

At the gym you can walk the treadmill while watching golf instruction videos on YouTube to make double use of the time!

Resource: Golf Fitness Training Program

Check out these practice resources below as they will take you to that next level and help lower your golf scores if you follow them!