I’m not bragging, but in my PGA Tour pro-am debut Wednesday at the Turning Stone Resort Championship, I shot four over: One over a tent, one over the gallery, one over the green, one over a tree. More on that later. First, some thoughts on driving from my team’s pro, John Rollins.
Playing with a PGA Tour pro is like playing a real-world game of Golden Tee: He hits fairways and greens over and over. (My track ball must have been broken.) To get Rollins, 34, talking, just ask him about his driving. "I'm second on Tour in total driving," says Rollins, who won the Legends Reno-Tahoe Open in August. He averages almost 300 yards per poke and hits about 65 percent of his fairways. Sure, you putt for dough, he says, but you drive for it, too. “Out here, winning comes down to who makes putts on the weekend, but if you don’t drive it well, it’s tough to put yourself in position to have those putts. I just love hitting driver. If I’m between driver and 3-wood, I’ll usually go with driver. I just feel comfortable with it. In college, our coach made us play really tight courses using only a driver [on the par-4s and par-5s]. He wanted us to learn how to hit it straight and far. That practice paid off. The most common mistake I see amateurs make is with alignment. Their shoulders aim left, their feet aim right, and who knows where the ball is going. You have to get your body aligned toward your target. Then, my swing key with driver is to keep my shoulders level throughout the entire swing. You don’t want your left shoulder dipping in the backswing. Good alignment and level shoulders throughout solves a lot of swing problems."
Photo: Stuart Franklin/Getty Images
